Customer Reviews

Lilla's Feast: A True Story of Food, Love, and War in the Orient

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A loving tribute to a great-grandmother I would have liked to have met, but who lived a life I'm glad I skipped.

Born in China in 1882, she lived in China, India and England during times of great change. No longer young, she and her husband were imprisoned by the Japanese during World War II. During the imprisonment Lilla dreamed of food. In her mind she composed a cookbook. A cookbook that is today in the Imperial War Museum in London. It's a cookbook of traditional foods, of oriental foods, a cookbook of dreams to replace the starvation in the camp.

The book is a biography of Lilla, but more than that it is a picture of a time long past that is forever gone. Besides the cookbook and family records, Ms. Osborne draws on newspaper clippings and other historical information to give a picture of life in those times, in those places. It makes for fascinating reading.

The previous review which reviles the colonial bias of this biography has little relevance ... this is the world as it was then and the story is not being told to address the right or wrong of it, but rather to tell the story of the author's great grandmother in the grand sweep of WWII. The woman in this incredible story makes the best of deprivations and a bad marriage and far flung family, circumstances take her from her beloved China to England, India, all of this in that bygone time with none of todays conveniences and she remained a figure of dignity and elegance who also has experiences of sublime beauty and love... I think this little masterpiece will make its way into your heart and stay there, it did with me.

"Lilla's Feast" describes a time not so very long ago that seems impossibly distant. The world-wide expansion of European colonialism in the 19th century caused thousands of people, especially British, to seek their fortunes in the colonies and the trading emporiums in the exotic East, especially India and China. Lilla, the great-grandmother of the author was one of them. She was born in Chefoo, China in 1882 and spent most of her life in China or India.

Lilla never did anything of great importance, but she stands for all the Brits born and raised abroad who felt a bit foreign when they returned "home" to England on visits. During the course of her 100-year life Lilla was present during the peak of Western power and prestige in the Orient before 1900 and its rapid decline thereafter culminating in World War II in which Lilla and her family ended up in a Japanese concentration camp.

We follow Lilla through marriages, births,deaths, family troubles in India and China, the hardships of Weihsien internee camp in China during World War II, and finally back to an uneasy old age in England -- the money, power, and prestige of life as a privileged Westener in China now gone. It's a good story to be read about a class of people who saw their pleasant lives and lucrative livelihoods destroyed by war and politics. We don't feel all that sorry for Lilla, nor even that fond of her, but we are interested in her experiences. Along the way we get some fascinating pictures of the life of Brits in China -- and especially the hardships of Weihsien, a concentration camp that has catalyzed a sizeable body of literature. See "The Call" by John Hersey, a novel about a missionary who is interned in Weihsien and "Shantung Compound" by Lawrence Gilkey, a sociological classic about people under the stress of imprisonment.

Smallchief

This is one of the most amazing stories that I have recently read. The book is beautifully produced, and the Author has gone to an enormous amount of trouble in collecting photographs and information concerning her Great Grandmother, who defied every hardship she faced. This incredible Lady lived to the age of 100, having survived a Japanese concentration camp in World War 2, preceded by other trials and tribulations. Her story is an object lesson to us all, in how not to give in, how to keep going whatever the circumstances that life brings to us. The early days of her first Marriage tell us how to keep a man happy even though she had a miserable time with him!!!This is a book to be read again and again, a wonderful read and most inspiring.

What we have here is a woman's life spanning just over 100 years. Lilla is not a particularly likeable woman, but if you digest the details you can see why (possibly). She is an interesting woman who weathered particularly exhausting situations and managed her life so that she did what was expedient.
This book has numerous photographs.
The book isn't well-written or edited. That aside, the details of survival, one way or another, are quite out of the ordinary and at times fascinating. It became even more so when I realized I had actually seen this cookbook when I was lucky enough to come across it several years ago at the Imperial War Museum. It was a nice , unexpected connection. And I have never before read of the Japanese prison camp existence within China. An easy read of eras gone by.

What a wonderful, well researched story of a time gone by and a woman who refused to let truly terrible expereinces wreck her spirit. Bravo to Ms. Osborne for telling her great-grandmother's story so well and so lovingly.

But I for one was not. The book is steeped in a bias towards colonialism. The tone of the book encourages the reader to think of the Chinese, Japanese, and Indians as faceless "others" surrounding the more civilised and elegant British and European populations, only to be depicted in elementary-school-textbook-like passages about historical events.
Although the author's inclination to view her great-grandmother as a victim of nearly everyone and everything (fate as well!)is certainly understandable, it hardly makes for captivating reading. The writing style is a dry mix of "facts" derived from personal effects and sheer speculation.
This book is based upon a recipe book which was donated to a British museum.... as opposed to the priceless artifacts which Britain so self-righteously helped itself to during it's tyrannical episode of colonization... and still doesn't feel the need to return.
I suppose it's hardly possible to expect an unbiased view of colonization from the wife of the youngest conservative member of Parliament, but one can hope.