Description
Book SynopsisEver since he can remember, Dom Joly has been fascinated by travel to odd places. In part this stems from a childhood spent in war-torn Lebanon, where instead of swapping marbles in the schoolyard, he had a shrapnel collection -- the schoolboy currency of Beirut. Dom''s upbringing was interspersed with terrifying days and nights spent hunkered in the family basement under Syrian rocket attack or coming across a pile of severed heads from a sectarian execution in the pine forests near his home.
These early experiences left Dom with a profound loathing for the sanitized experiences of the modern day travel industry and a taste for the darkest of places. In this brilliantly odd and hilariously told travel memoir, Dom Joly sets out on a quest to visit those destinations from which the average tourist would, and should, run a mile. The more insalubrious the place, the more interesting is the journey and so we follow Dom as he skis in Iran on segregated slopes, spends a weekend in
Trade Review
Destinations that would make a travel agent go pale -- Sunday Times
. . . brilliantly funny, irreverent writing with non-sickly compassion for those who live under the most oppressive regimes... a very human travelogue -- Country Life
Readability in spades -- Scotsman
Intoxicating and hilarious. Like all the best travel writing, it makes you long to be in the seat next to him -- John Niven
