Introduction to the question of hospitality : ethics and politics -- Patriarchs and their women, some inaugural intertexts of hospitality : the Odyssey, Abraham, Lot and the Levite of Ephraim -- Friendship and sexual difference: hospitality from brotherhood to motherhood and beyond -- Frenchalgeria, (not) asking for a name, naming, calling by name in tales of Algerians -- The dangers of hospitality : the French state, cultural difference and gods -- Animals and what is human -- Concluding around hospitality.

Judith Still sets Derrida's work in a series of contexts in a series of contexts including the socio-political history of France, especially in relation to Algeria, and his relationship to other writers, most importantly Hélène Cixous and Emmanuel Levinas: key thinkers of hospitality. Working across the full breadth of fields that Derrida's work on hospitality influenced, Still thinks through relationships between individuals and the community or state. Judith Still also follows the thread of sexual difference in Derrida's writing to shed light on his exploration of the complex and delicate, strange yet familiar, political and ethical dilemmas of how to be those impossible things: a good host and a good guest