Saints and thieves of coffee
https://www.athenaeum.nl/boek/?authorTitle=eggers-dave/monk-of-mokha--9780241244906/
Life snapped into focus for Alkhanshali when he learned that coffee was originally cultivated in Yemen, some 500 years ago. Today, however, Yemeni coffee is regarded as some of the worst in the world. It became Alkhanshali’s obsession to restore its honor — never mind that he was broke, knew nothing about coffee and, frankly, didn’t much care for the taste. Never mind Yemen’s seething civil war.
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Before you can say Horatio Alger, Alkhanshali was assessing coffee crops in Yemen with seasoned disdain and wearing, as you do, a garland of grenades that signaled his “willingness to take any argument to its logical conclusion.” His mission culminated in the most harrowing return journey this side of the “Odyssey” — but time and time again, he talked himself out of trouble; he has a preternatural gift for persuading others to join his cause.
In “The Monk of Mokha,” he moves lightly between story and analysis, and between brisk histories of Yemeni immigration to America; gentrifying San Francisco; coffee cultivation (“quite possibly the most complex journey from farm to consumption of any foodstuff known to humankind”); and the saints and thieves who dispersed the beans around the world.
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