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

by Frances Osborne

Book Overview

At the end of her life, Frances Osborne's one-hundred-year-old great-grandmother Lilla was as elegant as ever-all fitted black lace and sparkling-white diamonds. To her great-grandchildren, Lilla was... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0345467000
• ISBN13: 9780345467003
• Release Date: September 2004
• Publisher: Ballantine Books
• Length: 280 Pages
• Weight: 1.30 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 6.6" x 9.6"

Customer Reviews

The Rise and Fall of a British Colonial

"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

A Remarkable Story

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.

The story of Lila's life will stay with you...

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.

Read this book!

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.

A Life of Hardship, Lived As Well as Possible

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.