Szabłowski has told Poland's Gazeta Wyborcza daily he is delighted with the prospect, saying in a Facebook post that "it is probably the first time" the rights to a Polish book "have been sold directly to Hollywood."
How to Feed a Dictator looks at Iraq’s Saddam Hussein, Uganda’s Idi Amin, Albania’s Enver Hoxha, Cuba’s Fidel Castro, and Cambodia’s Pol Pot through the eyes of their cooks.
Szabłowski spent several years trying to get in touch with the chefs who worked for these dictators. His book has won rave reviews in Poland and abroad.
Mariusz Cieślik, a Polish critic, described it as “a tale about terror – the terror of murderers who are afraid for their lives, and the terror of those whose lives are at the mercy of their whims.”
The Wall Street Journal wrote that the author’s “personal interviews with the cooks of the tyrants of Iraq, Uganda, Albania, Cuba and Cambodia provide historical context for the worlds in which these tyrants operated and make sure we remember how evil they were, even as we read about their fondness for grilled cheese with honey or refusal to eat dried elephant meat.”
The Financial Times observed that “Szabłowski’s skill is to hang back from judgment … Like his compatriot, the literary non-fictioneer Kapuściński, Szabłowski lets his subjects speak for themselves [offering] behind-the-scenes glimpses of hypocrisies, capriciousness and bullying [and] posing universal questions about collusion and responsibility. Szabłowski is a limpid and gently brilliant storyteller.”
How to Feed a Dictator has been translated into English by Antonia Lloyd-Jones.
At 40, Szabłowski is among Poland’s most prominent reporters. His features on the problem of illegal migrants flocking to the European Union have won the European Parliament Journalism Prize.
His reportage on the 1943 massacre of Poles in Ukraine won the Polish Press Agency’s Ryszard Kapuściński Award, and his book about Turkey, The Assassin from Apricot City, won the Beata Pawlak Award and an English PEN award.
(mk/gs)