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This looks like an op-ed piece for a major newspaper. Highly entertaining and astute.

Food is very important for human being, but it doesn't mean any type of food, mostly you will see in the middle class of below poverty line that people don't have food for the last two or three days totally depends on water. Most of the people die not because of food, but lack of nutrition.

Thanks for this great review: I look forward to reading MMMM. A good novel on the havoc caused by political interference is Paul Torday's "Salmon Fishing in the Yemen". The film version made a couple of years ago was OK, but the book is wittier and wiser. Well worth reading.

To have a better life and a better world is to fight corruption for everyone and all beneficiaries for resources in the land, not some individuals who think of themselves. A honest and faithful servant who can commit his/her time like Sam Koim is the best thing a person can do for the people of that nation. Wish we had more like him.

Thanks Ian for an interesting post on an important issue. One point I'd like to add is that the idea that the rich are the 'fat' ones because they are eating too much while the poor are under-nourished is an overly simplistic representation of reality. The relationship between nutritional status, health and poverty is complex. For example, obesity is a significant issue amongst many poor, urban households across the world (as is micronutrient deficiency). One of the reasons for this is the cheapest foods are the highly-refined, high-calorie, low-nutrient type that fill people up quickly. Also, it is possible to find in the same household an overweight mother with an under-nourished child. So the 'starved vs stuffed' dichotomy doesn't work. It seems to me that what is an issue of international justice is that all people, everywhere are able to eat nutritious foods. As you argue, this is most definitely about taking concerted action against undernutrition. But it is also about ensuring poor people live in environments that make nutritious food choices accessible and affordable, and that political and food-corporatation leaders make decisions to eradicate malnutrition in all its forms, across the world.

Thankyou for fighting corruption Sir.

Thanks Ashlee, And thanks for the Tidwell suggestion. I can imagine great travel writing / memoir around aid work. Interestingly I read "Emergency Sex..." and was kind of irritated by it. It seemed wrong to focus so much on their (the authors') own hardships amidst the much greater sorrows of the people in the countries they were working. And all the UN bashing bugged me for being unaccompanied by any real analysis of why the UN was that way. Yet oddly enough MMMM, which is more analytic, but also still mostly about the travails of aid workers not aid recipients, didn't bug me at all. Perhaps because it was fiction? Or possibly because I was just generally annoyed with all the UN bashing going on at the time I read ES? Or maybe J. just does a better job of getting the tone right? I confess I'm not sure. One thing I'll say in favour of MMMM is it's easy reading and the pages kept turning, which is why it overtook all the other books on my "really must read" list.

Thanks for the review Terence. MMMM is on my Kindle wish list so I can download it when I have a connection.

Hi Ashlee, Great piece and it is critical that we respond to these suggestions before they get too much momentum. Some colleagues did some analysis of this in the African context and found that US food aid (buying US grain/maize, shipping on US carriers, paying for US NGOs to distribute) cost US$670 per ton. Local purchasing (in neighbouring countries or regions) cost US$240 per ton and supporting farmers with seed and fertiliser to grow their own food cost about US$77 per ton. So there is a strong cost-effectiveness/wastage argument as well as the others you have made. Joel

Great review Terence -- I really want to read this now, whenever I find the time! While not fiction, a book in the aid 'storytelling' genre that I enjoyed was 'The Ponds of Kalambayi' by Mike Tidwell. It's basically a Peace Corps memoir (there's a few around in this genre) but it really reflects the challenges of community development and making sustainable change. There's also 'Emergency Sex and Other Desperate Measures' -- once again not fiction, but certainly an interesting insight into the UN system and working in fragile environments.

Sina Retzlaff is a great leader, she did a very good job when dealing with a private sector, something that every leader should do. During her leadership, she had made some major changes.