Hospitality

Chris Keulemans

In a mix of travel stories, memories, observations and imagination, Chris Keulemans goes in search of the art of hospitality.

Hospitality is just as important to our existence as air and water. On a journey we perish if no door opens for us. We dry out without receiving visitors. In the year that hospitality came to a standstill, Chris Keulemans thinks back to warm evenings in Beirut and Sarajevo, fabulous dinners in Trieste and Berlin, staying in a cemetery in Tunis, that one café where the lights were still on the night after 9/11, meetings with Salman Rushdie, Chimamanda Ngozie Adichie and Henk-for-all-women-a-gift. At home in North Amsterdam, he caresses the dark lacquered planks of the large dining table. Are they coming back, are guests?

In a mix of travel stories, memories, observations and imagination, Keulemans goes in search of the art of hospitality. Why is it warmer in places where there is less? Where does the couple who put out a meal for their son's killer live? How do you become friends with a hotel room? What do guest and hostess never say to each other? 'Against a backdrop of war and social injustice, Chris Keulemans reminds us of the beauty of our humanity in beautifully intertwined stories.