Be My Guest

February 1, 2020
The roles food and hospitality play in a woman's personal life and in the broader world. "Who are we becoming? Who do we want to be?" asks Basil, the Berlin-based co-founder of Authors for Peace. "Can the answer lie in a sausage? Perhaps only insofar as one never exactly knows--or wants to!--all the contents within the casing. Identity, too, is a mince of sorts." In these short and sometimes meandering musings, in which the author enlists the wisdom of Plato, Kant, Hannah Arendt, Peter Singer, and other thinkers, Basil explores what it means to be a woman, an immigrant, a host, and a guest through the backdrop of food, specifically the Indian food that reflects her Sikh background. Although born in London to Indian parents, Basil has also lived in Kenya, Britain, and Germany, giving her exposure to unique experiences that have shaped her ways of thinking about what it means to belong. Physical and emotional sustenance via food are the main themes that move through Basil's ruminations about integration, hospitality, the necessity of the European Union, altruism, and her insecurities about her relationships with others and with food itself. She shares her obsession with her mother's kadhi, a curry made with graham flour and yogurt, describes a langar (a free meal at a Sikh temple, regardless of the guest's religion or ethnicity), and chronicles her difficulties in maintaining a healthy weight. Pungent details help bring readers into the moment--e.g., Basil's observations of the variety of bare feet she encountered at the langar. The tone is conversational, but the author also touches on deep subjects such as racism, food waste, and how food can be healing, seductive, or even used as a weapon. Although a quick read, the book offers plenty of room for contemplation. Careful considerations of the wide world of food and "the life-play of hospitality."

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Starred review from February 17, 2020
Novelist Basil (Strangers on the 16:02) draws on memoir, storytelling, religion, politics, and philosophy in this delightful and ruminative culinary cultural study. A British-Indian writer raised in Kenya and now living in Berlin, Basil playfully begins this series of observations with the most primal guest-host relationship: “Mothers... host us as no one else can—in their bodies. A nine-month gestation. Guest-ation?” Her own constant hunger for food as a child illustrates “the consumption epidemic ravaging our capitalist societies.... Our appetites must keep increasing to propel the economy.” She explores food as power and writes of women cooking for “the affections of the family,” in addition to reflecting on colonial India, where British administrators in 1876 ordered “a week-long feast for 68,000 officials” while “an estimated 100,000 Indians starved to death.” Growing up Sikh in a Kenyan-Indian community, Basil struggled to “work out our place in the world,” understood “the edge of the plate is like a border,” and saw how the religious tradition of Langar, a post-worship communal meal, fostered “equality between all human beings and service to the community.” Later, as she explains, those experiences guided her work with refugee advocacy groups in Germany. Basil’s powerful intellectual curiosity is sure to intrigue readers.

March 20, 2020

In this first work of nonfiction, novelist Basil (Strangers on the 16:02) does not hold back in asking difficult questions about the complex nature of hospitality and how it reflects deeply ingrained cultural traits in both the host, guest, and society as a whole. Basil moved often throughout her life and lived in several countries, including Great Britain, Kenya, and Germany. As a child, she observed how her grandmother would use her elaborate cooking to fulfill a need for love and validation, but this also led to her grandmother having complicated relationships with those around her. Basil's approach to exploring the notion of what it means to be hospitable brings a fresh perspective to the nuances of cultural, familial, and personal expectations within hospitality. As an avid food lover, she uses culinary expression as the primary way to explore how traditionally different cultures use food to show both acceptance and rejection toward one another. This is a deeply personal and honest reflection on family, tradition, and custom. VERDICT Blending the personal and the philosophical, this account is recommended for readers interested in sociology, anthropology, and cuisine.--Monique Martinez, Univ. of North Georgia Lib., Dahlonega

Copyright 2020 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

March 1, 2020
We are all guests in this world, from even before the moment of birth (gestation): so Basil has come to understand throughout her remarkable life, and details in this memoir. Now a Berlin resident, she has lived in London and Kenya, among other places, and knows what it means to be an outsider hungry for acceptance and more than ready to accept a dinner invitation. She observes that hospitality doesn't necessarily proceed from wholly selfless motives, as in the case of the Shah of Iran's massive party to celebrate Iran's 2,500-year anniversary, which was merely a means of trumpeting wealth and power. More often, hospitality is a way to connect host to stranger, old to new, physical want to spiritual satisfaction. In multicultural society, Basil's own welcoming Sikh family would invite Muslim friends to dine and then find relationships complicated because their guests would not consume any non-halal meat. Finding inspiration even from abstruse philosopher Jacques Derrida, Basil chooses to welcome all, both foreigners and refugees, with generosity.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2020, American Library Association.)