Day of Honey

Publishers Information

About Day of Honey

Publisher Web Link: http://imprints.simonandschuster.biz/free-press

Day of Honey: A Memoir of Food, Love, and War

A luminous portrait of life in the war-torn Middle East, Day of Honey combines the brilliance of From Beirut to Jerusalem with the pleasures of Eat, Pray, Love.

In the fall of 2003, Annia Ciezadlo spent her honeymoon in Baghdad. Day of Honey is her memoir of love, war, and the hunger for food and friendship--a communion that feeds the soul as well as the body--in times of war.

Living in 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 as the young couple settles into their new home, discovering the pleasures of food and family, the bloodshed in Iraq extends to Lebanon and reawakens the terrible specter of sectarian violence.

Not since Orwell’s Homage to Catalonia has there been such a fearless, intimate portrait of civilian life during wartime. In lucid, fiercely intelligent prose, Ciezadlo describes the years she spent breaking bread with Shiites and Sunnis, warlords and refugees, matriarchs and mullahs. From secret Baghdad book clubs to home cooking with her Lebanese mother-in-law, she takes us into the heart of the modern Middle East at a historic moment when hope and fear collide.

Ciezadlo illuminates the human cost of war with a rare ability to anchor the rhythms of daily life within larger political and historical context. Day of Honey is a brave and compassionate portrait of the extraordinary people who became part of her life in Baghdad and Beirut--a moving testament to the power of love and generosity to transcend the misery of war.  

Author Information

About Annia Ciezadlo

Author Web Link: http://www.anniaciezadlo.com/

Annia Ciezadlo was a special correspondent for The Christian Science Monitor in Baghdad and The New Republic in Beirut. She has written about culture, politics, and the Middle East for The Nation, Saveur, The Washington Post, The New York Times, The New York Observer, and Lebanon’s Daily Star. Her article about cooking with Iraqi refugees in Beirut was included in Best Food Writing 2009.

Until 2003, Ciezadlo was a senior editor at the award-winning New York City newsmagazine City Limits. Her December 2002 cover story, “Coney Island High,” used the story of a recovered drug dealer to show how urban renewal devastated one of New York’s coolest neighborhoods—and an entire generation of people who lived there. In 2003, it was a finalist for the Freedom Forum’s Excellence in Urban Journalism Award and the Harry Chapin Media Awards.

In late 2003, Ciezadlo left Brooklyn for Baghdad. Living there and in Beirut, she covered war in Iraq, uprisings in Lebanon, crackdowns in Syria, and the 2006 summer war between Israel and Hezbollah. She specializes in stories about culture and civil society, in exploring the intersections between larger political realities and everyday activities like driving, cooking, and going to school. This collection includes stories about Hezbollah perfume, Iraqi war poetry, Lebanon’s slow food movement, Baghdad’s political graffiti, and many more.

Ciezadlo lives with her husband in New York. Her memoir Day of Honey: A Memoir of Food, Love, and War, will be published by Free Press on February 1, 2011.

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Day of Honey

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