PositiveThe Times Literary Supplement (UK)In Be My Guest, Priya Basil offers a rich meditation on the nature of hospitality, inviting readers to question the relationship between host and guest and to examine the philosophical contradictions at play ... Food provides the backdrop to candid musings on hospitality, community and race. Basil, born to a British Sikh family, grew up in Kenya before returning to England as a young adult and then settling in Germany ... Philosophical and political passages are balanced with lighter observations about mealtime behaviours: the instinct to choose the same dish to stave off disappointment; the tendency to gorge on a new food; the ways we negotiate the taking of the last portion ... The root of \'hospitality\', Priya Basil learns, comes from the ancient Indo-European word ghosti, meaning host, guest and stranger simultaneously.
