Interview with Witold Szabłowski.
How to Feed A Dictator, a book now published in Hungarian, features the chefs working for five famous dictators of the 20th-century—Saddam Hussein, Idi Amin, Enver Hoxha, Fidel Castro, and Pol Pot. Coming from countries far away from each other, what do these chefs have in common? How was self-criticism expressed in communist Albania? Why does nostalgia for dictatorships still live on? Which dictator’s chef would the book’s author like to be? Witold Szabłowski, the Polish writer of How to Feed A Dictator answered all our questions.
What is your work schedule and daily routine?
Recently, everything changed due to the war. I’ve taken in refugees, volunteered in a couple of pro-Ukrainian projects, and currently I’m curating three festivals focusing on Ukrainian culture and literature. My other book is partly about Ukraine, and just like in the case of How to Feed A Dictator, it’s also about chefs, and how Russia uses them, the kitchen, and recipes to build an empire. It starts with the chef of the last Tsar and ends with Putin’s chef. I wrote the book three years ago—back then it was still possible to meet Putin’s personal chef. Now, I would probably be put in jail for something like this. As for How to Feed A Dictator, it took me four years to gather the material needed to publish the book. The biggest challenge and what consumed most of my time was getting hold of the chefs.
How did you find them?
The easiest to find was the chef of Fidel Castro, as he runs a little restaurant in the middle of Havana. I simply went to the city centre with a bottle of very good Polish brandy and tried to be friendly to make a good impression. The toughest was the chef of Saddam Hussein as the last thing he wanted was some weird guy from Poland visiting him and asking questions about his work with Saddam. I was helped by local fixers, journalists, and activists. My plan was to spend a week or two with the chefs and cook with them. It was a real challenge to persuade them to tell me their stories, to gain their trust, and especially to let me into their kitchens, into their kingdom. The kitchen is a private, intimate place, it’s where their heart lies. Therefore, if they let you in, it means you’ve become friends.
In your book, there’s a dictator from every continent. Was this a conscious decision?
Yes. I thought of it as a very ambitious project. I didn’t want to write a culinary book, although of course, in a certain regard it is, as it includes recipes and stories of chefs. It’s rather the culinary and political map of the 20th and 21st centuries’ changing world: moments of post-colonialism in Africa, the revolutionary movements in Asia and Latin America, and finally, the 21st century with the fall of Saddam Hussein. Why did I omit Stalin or Hitler? I only wanted to include people that I met in person. I felt that my added value was not writing from archives, or rewriting other books, but my own stories.
Have you met the chefs of other dictators as well?
Yes, I also met the chefs who cooked for Tito, Kim Jong-il, Muammar Gaddafi, and Nicolae Ceaușescu, but there came a time when I had to stop. I didn’t want the book to be a collection of every chef of a dictator whose hand I shook. I chose the five dictators I felt were most relevant when they lived.
The dictator from Europe is Enver Hoxha from Albania. Why did you end up choosing him from our continent?
Being from Albania, Hoxha is not that well known, but for me, he was incredibly interesting as in Albania, communism was very extreme, and he isolated the country entirely. At the beginning of his chapter, Mr. K., tells the touching story of how he always had to criticise himself: “Even when I did nothing wrong, we had to start every day with self-criticism or else would’ve been punished.” A good communist is self-critical, but just imagine starting every day by criticising yourself for thirty minutes!
You did a lot of research, read books, and met with historians. Still, was it possible to make sure the chefs told you the truth?
I also spent a lot of time fact-checking.. When somebody tells you some small habits of a dictator, there aren’t many people who can confirm the information. So I always tried to find other people who worked or lived with the dictators, too. For example, I met the personal doctor of Saddam Hussein, or the two sons of Idi Amin just to confirm what I had heard before from the chef.
Despite coming from different cultural backgrounds and cuisines, did you find anything in common in these chefs?
I was actually quite surprised to find that they were all very similar characters: extroverted, open-minded, friendly, and easy to talk with. I enjoyed my time with them. First I thought this to be a coincidence, but meeting over seven of them, this was a pattern. I realised that dictators are not only perfect in manipulation but also great at psychology with a natural instinct to understand people. They understand that you can be at war with everyone— your wife, the prime minister, even other countries—, but not with your chef. When chefs are in a good mood, you feel it in the meals they prepare. Taunting the person who cooks for you is never a good idea. This is why only reliable people were hired, who made them feel good. Naturally, who they were cooking for is always in the back of your mind: mass murderers, dictators, autocrats. It’s an awkward situation, but all in all, I loved spending time with them.
How were they able to stay positive? They must have witnessed tragic events.
The chef of Pol Pot cooked for a real monster—a mass murderer with the blood of three million people on his hands. Still, she was an amazing person. She firmly believed in the ideals of communism. I learned that she had lost her child, falling victim to the Khmer Rouge. Yet Pol Pot still made this young, 16-year-old girl from a village fall in love with him, and once she did, he ruined her life. She always told me how great and handsome Pol Pot was, how he had a beautiful smile. Whatever she said, she was still the victim of the Khmer Rouge. She died two years ago. She’d be upset hearing what I’m telling you, and she wouldn't agree. However, her dying of stomach cancer, I believe, is very symbolic.
In your other book Dancing Bears: True Stories about Longing for the Old Days you write about people who feel nostalgic about dictatorships. In How to Feed A Dictator you also encounter people sharing such sentiments. What do you think fuels this nostalgia?
Freedom—and this is what Dancing Bears is about―is not easy. Dictators take away your freedom, and give you the feeling of stability in return, so unstable times are the best times for dictators to rise. Dictators toy with our fears, and pretend to know how to solve our problems, but generally, it’s all a lie. In How to Feed A Dictator, the Iraqi taxi driver doesn’t remember that people were killed in Saddam’s regime, only that there were no gangs in Baghdad. There were no gangs because Saddam’s government was itself a big gang.
You also interviewed two of Fidel’s chefs (Erasmo and Flores). The story of Flores reminded me of a Hrabal novel, especially I Served the King of England. Did you read any books in preparation for writing?
When I want to make my writing a bit more literary, I choose the style I’d like it to be written in, and for the chapter for Flores, I took Hrabal as an example, so thank you. I also read a lot of Joseph Heller and Kurt Vonnegut. I want even heavy topics to be ironic, and to contain some humour and lightness. I didn’t want tragedies to take over, which would’ve been easy, especially with Saddam and Pol Pot. I wanted hope to prevail, and for me, these writers give hope.
So you adapted what the chefs said to your own style?
It was a very difficult process, especially as most of the texts were in Arabic, Luo, Khmer, Albanian and Spanish—not English. It was challenging, as I wanted to make sure no information was lost in translation. So while I translated from English, I tried to use words that a person in that age would say in Polish. The chef from Uganda was the oldest, he could be my grandfather. So I spent time with my grandfather and asked him how he would say certain things. The editing process was also important. The chapters start with something very interesting, an appetiser, if you may. However, sometimes the most exciting stories were mentioned on the last day, meaning I had to edit a lot.
I saw the covers of the English, German, and Polish editions of How to Feed A Dictator. Each of them approached the topic with different visual solutions. Do you take part in designing the cover of your books?
In Poland, I try to participate in the process and work together with the graphic designers. But I have so many books out in other countries that I simply don’t have the time to get involved with each cover design. However, I do receive the book covers before they’re published to approve the design.
What’s your favourite Polish food story?
I really like the story of the pierogi dumplings and the way they spread around the world. The dumplings were originally Chinese, and the Mongols brought them here during the Mongol invasion of Poland in the 13th century. The borderline of Pierogi is the Oder River in Poland, which means the dumplings can be found in Russia, Ukraine, Poland and Hungary, but not in Germany, France or other Western countries. Nowadays, it’s very exciting to see how chefs in Poland experiment and play with this traditional dish by adding an interesting twist to it.
If you had to choose, which dictator’s chef would you be?
Fidel Castro. He wasn’t as bad as the other dictators and I think he was an exciting guy to be around. He always did something interesting, but he was also a bit psycho, both in a good and a bad way. In his case, I believe he had good intentions, but things went south. I like how he was all about drinking good whiskeys or rums, smoking cigars, and fishing with Ernest Hemingway. His chef Flores said that Fidel met with Gabriel García Márquez many times, and he cooked for their private dinners. What could be better than cooking for Fidel and Marquez, while eavesdropping on their conversation. It would be so great!
We’d like to thank Prae Publishing and PesText Festival for making this interview possible.