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Waiting on Wednesday (January 5)

January 5, 2011 by Darlene

Waiting On Wednesday is a weekly event, hosted by Breaking the Spine, that spotlights upcoming releases that we’re eagerly anticipating.

My pick this week is a book called Day of Honey: A Memoir of Food, Love, and War by Annia Ciezadlo releasing February 1, 2011. Here’s a description of the book from Amazon.com…

A luminous portrait of life in the Middle East, Day of Honey weaves history, cuisine, and firsthand reporting into a fearless, intimate exploration of everyday survival.

In the fall of 2003, Annia Ciezadlo spent her honeymoon in Baghdad. Over the next six years, while living in Baghdad and Beirut, she broke bread with Shiites and Sunnis, warlords and refugees, matriarchs and mullahs. Day of Honey is her memoir of the hunger for food and friendship—a communion that feeds the soul as much as the body in times of war.

Reporting from occupied Baghdad, Ciezadlo longs for normal married life. She finds it in Beirut, her husband’s hometown, a city slowly recovering from years of civil war. But just as the young couple settles into a new home, the bloodshed they escaped in Iraq spreads to Lebanon and reawakens the terrible specter of sectarian violence. In lucid, fiercely intelligent prose, Ciezadlo uses food and the rituals of eating to illuminate a vibrant Middle East that most Americans never see. We get to know people like Roaa, a determined young Kurdish woman who dreams of exploring the world, only to see her life under occupation become confined to the kitchen; Abu Rifaat, a Baghdad book lover who spends his days eavesdropping in the ancient city’s legendary cafés; Salama al-Khafaji, a soft-spoken dentist who eludes assassins to become Iraq’s most popular female politician; and Umm Hassane, Ciezadlo’s sardonic Lebanese mother-in-law, who teaches her to cook rare family recipes—which are included in a mouthwatering appendix of Middle Eastern comfort food. As bombs destroy her new family’s ancestral home and militias invade her Beirut neighborhood, Ciezadlo illuminates the human cost of war with an extraordinary ability to anchor the rhythms of daily life in a larger political and historical context. From forbidden Baghdad book clubs to the oldest recipes in the world, Ciezadlo takes us inside the Middle East at a historic moment when hope and fear collide. Day of Honey is a brave and compassionate portrait of civilian life during wartime—a moving testament to the power of love and generosity to transcend the misery of war.

This book sounds utterly fantastic to me! I would love to read it! How about you – are you waiting for anything this week? Leave me your link or share in the comments. Have a great day everyone!

© 2010, Darlene of Peeking Between the Pages. All Rights Reserved. If you’re reading this on a site other than Peeking Between the Pages or Darlene’s Feed, be aware that this post has been stolen and is used without permission.

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Filed Under: Waiting on Wednesday

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Veens says

    January 5, 2011 at 11:40 am

    That cover is absolutely gorgeous! This sounds really good.

  2. bermudaonion says

    January 5, 2011 at 2:48 pm

    Oooh, you know how I love a good memoir! After seeing this, I'm waiting on this book too.

  3. Blodeuedd says

    January 5, 2011 at 3:27 pm

    Loving the colours, sounds good 🙂

  4. Zibilee says

    January 5, 2011 at 3:58 pm

    This sounds like a really intriguing memoir and one that I would really enjoy. I also love the cover, so thanks for sharing it!

  5. carla says

    January 6, 2011 at 3:21 am

    It is always interesting to learn and be a part of people's everyday lives. Will look forward to your thoughts on this later.

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