How do you satisfy the appetites of a dictator?
Does food influence their decisions? What’s bubbling in your pot when the fate of others—and your own—is at stake?

Traveling across four continents for more than three years, Polish journalist Witold Szablowski tracked down and locked himself in the kitchens with the world’s most unusual chefs: the people who served five bloodthirsty dictators and learned to survive in difficult times. With realism and narrative skill, in a blend of reportage and cookbook, he presents us with pivotal moments in 20th-century history… seen from the kitchen.

• What did Pol Pot eat while two million Cambodians died of hunger?
• Did Idi Amin really eat human flesh?
• Why was Fidel Castro obsessed with a particular cow?
• And what did Saddam Hussein eat after ordering tens of thousands of Kurds to be poisoned with toxic gases?

Because of this diet, he was hungry most of his life and so he was often irritable. How did this affect his decisions? Think about it—what decisions would you make if you were always hungry and in a bad mood? […] Whenever I saw he was in a very bad mood, I made him a dessert. […] It worked. That way I managed to lift his spirits. […] Who knows how many lives I saved this way.
Mr. K., cook for Enver Hoxha
Excerpt from the book

The film rights for this book have been purchased by the production company of actor Channing Tatum.

In 2021, the book was honored in Paris with the Gourmand Cookbook Award.