Amazon.co.uk Review
From the moment that we see the jacket, where words are back-to-front, we know that this book sees things from a different perspective.
Fortune Hotel is a new departure--the first collection of alternative travel writing. The chemical generation no longer need to drop Es to get spaced out--travel is the opiate of all the contemporary writers whose unusual itineraries are collected in these post-modern peregrinations.
The tone of the design is continued by the apposite first story from Martyn Bedford which is, literally, full of shit: a drug-dealing backpacker comes a cropper through his dysentery. Then we have Howard Marks telling us of his way-out exploits, smuggling dope in his arse through customs: "Time for another joint", says Marks. Or another story. If some of this teeters towards crass posturing, this semi-inverted collection nevertheless offers some interesting and challenging tales. Those by Toby Litt, Will Self and Jean McNeil are beacons of sharp writing and astute observation.
The pathways of escapade and adventure charted in this anthology are linked by hotel-sink realism and the sepia tinted ennui of failed sexual encounters, leavened by the often humorous observance of the vulnerability that is the true fate of the traveller abroad. --Tabitha Vert
Synopsis
A collection of seventeen original stories from acclaimed and best-selling authors, which puts a new perspective on travel-writing. The characters in these stories, some true, most invented, cross the globe in search of escape and adventure, from kibbutz to beach resort, from drug smuggling to football.
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