Description
Book SynopsisThis collection of travel-inspired essays takes us across four continents to fifteen countries, showing us what
not to do when traveling.
Trade Review"In this collection of essays, Roberts recounts her adventures while traveling mostly solo to 15 countries. Along the way she navigates mishaps both large and small, from a dangerous mudslide in Peru to a tricky romantic entanglement in Greece. Each experience offers a chance to probe her inner 'bad tourist,' as she wrestles with issues of privilege, cultural blind spots, and her own insecurities on a journey to self-discovery."—
National Geographic"Replete with harrowing and laugh out loud accounts of misadventures at home and abroad, Suzanne Roberts’s
Bad Tourist collects entertaining stories from around the world. . . . Authentic, surprising, and irresistible,
Bad Tourist is a travel text worth getting lost in."—
Foreword Reviews"Roberts has spent decades circling the globe, chasing experience, understanding, and identity. This book is the culmination of her young adulthood on the move."—Courtney Eathorne,
Booklist"This would be a good pick for anyone that loves travel, misses traveling in these days of quarantine, or would like something different. This is a collection of love stories to old friends, lovers, her mother, new friends from her travels, discovered lands and cultures, and to herself."—alissacmiles.com
"Named Next Great Travel Writer by National Geographic’s
Traveler, Roberts handily fits the distinction with memories, images, and insights that put readers in the seat beside her or hiking up a too-close-for-comfort volcanic slope—all the while providing a sort of anti-guidebook unapologetically illustrating what not to do."—Donna McCrohan Rosenthal,
News Review"A fast-paced, smart and very enjoyable book."—Melissa Oliveira,
Hippocampus Magazine“I love travel, armchair and otherwise, so I knew it would be a pleasure letting Suzanne Roberts take me around the world on a shoestring, from India’s Grand Elephant Festival, to the steppes of Mongolia on the trail of Genghis Khan, to the cool tiles of another one-star bathroom wondering if this would be the time she’d puke herself to death. Even more satisfying are her honesty, courage, and eventual clarity as she tackles her own understories—family dysfunction and alcoholism, internalized misogyny, and what the climate catastrophe means for the travel addicted among us—combining these essays into a thoroughly relatable journey of the heart.”—Pam Houston, author of
Deep Creek: Finding Hope in the High Country“If Michel de Montaigne and Chelsea Handler could get together in a bar in some far-flung part of the world and get good and drunk, they might dream up a book like this. This is not your parents’ travel writing! If you’re thirsting for a literary triple shot of sex, booze, and misadventures,
Bad Tourist is your passport to a trip you won’t want to come home from.”—Michael P. Branch, author of
Rants from the Hill and
How to Cuss in Western“
Bad Tourist makes beautiful the absurdity and heartbreak accompanying us whenever we leave home. Roberts’s intimate, fiercely honest narrative voice imbues these realities with grace and demonstrates just how much is to be gained by living a life in the present tense.”—Kathryn Miles, author of
Quakeland: On the Road to America’s Next Devastating Earthquake“These thoughtful, hilarious, lusty essays will either have you renewing your passport or blowtorching it for good. Suzanne Roberts may be a bad tourist, but she’s one hell of a great writer.”—Gayle Brandeis, author of
The Art of MisdiagnosisTable of ContentsSIGHTS
The Love Test
Scared Shitless
My Mother Is My Wingman
Three Hours to Burn a Body
SLEEPING
Hotel Cádiz
Loving the Lie
The Call of the Coquí
Fourteen One-Night Stands
EATING AND DRINKING
Gone Missing
One Degree of Separation
The Peruvian Blackout
One Hundred Boyfriends
SPAS AND BEAUTY TREATMENTS
Prague and the Unbearable Lousiness of the Tourist
Stretching the Thigh Fat
Bellagio People
Knowing the Words by Heart
ACTIVITIES
Skiing the Fall Line
The Illuminations
Mating Season
Jungle Love
Bargaining, or the Third Stage of Grief
FESTIVALS AND SPECIAL EVENTS
In Search of Genghis Khan
Odds Are
The Grand Elephant Festival
Coming of Age in the Guna Yala Islands
GETTING THERE AND AWAY
Dangerous for a Woman Alone
A Wee Scottish Tour
Scary Flyer
El Borracho
DANGERS AND ANNOYANCES
The Riffraff in the Magical Kingdom
Middle-Aged Vagabonding
Sassy at Burning Man
Hiking Home
Acknowledgments
Source Acknowledgments
