Michael Rakowitz is an Iraqi American artist, and Professor of Art Theory and Practice at Northwestern University. Claudia Roden is an award-winning Egyptian British cookbook writer. Ella Shohat is Professor of Cultural Studies at New York University.
A beautiful cookbook dedicated to a single ingredient: date syrup. In 2018, Rakowitz reconstructed the Lamassu, a major work of antiquity destroyed by ISIS, in London's Trafalgar Square. Created from more than 10,000 flattened cans of date syrup, the monumental sculpture pointed to the imperiled state of culture--artistic, culinary, and otherwise--in Rakowitz's ancestral homeland, Iraq. A House with a Date Palm grew out of the Lamassu project, bringing together date syrup recipes from the artist's mother, his friends, and a handful of chefs. The book is, as the artist puts it, a way to taste the sculpture. No sculpture has ever tasted so bittersweet.--Andrea Gyorody Stained Page News Michael Rakowitz's cookbook is one of the best resources we've added to our kitchen lately. The perfect inspiration for cooking in the time of quarantine, it contains recipes from 41 popular chefs and food writers including Yotam Ottolenghi, Alice Waters, Claudia Roden, Prue Leith, and Anissa Helou, as well as sketches from the artist himself to illustrate each chapter-- Hyperallergic [A House with a Date Palm Will Never Starve] is a cookbook as artwork, a 'culinary intervention', and history and politics are also among its main ingredients.--Cameron Laux BBC Dates have been central to Rakowitz's artistic practice... [and he] hopes that his book will inspire a Western appetite for date syrup and, in so doing, create business for struggling plantations in Iraq.--Figgy Guyver Frieze Rakowitz's ability to embody the flavour of a complex cultural heritage, the diaspora and its many intersections is what makes this book a joy to read, whether or not you plan to actually cook anything.--Holly Black Elephant Rakowitz's date export project showed how the Iraqi date industry has suffered at the hands of US politics. Moving beyond art and into social activism like much of his work, the recipe book contributes to Rakowitz's interest in creating awareness of this.--Harriet Thorpe Wallpaper*