Fortune Hotel: Twisted Travel Stories - Hardcover

3.56

27 ratings by Goodreads

9780241140437: Fortune Hotel: Twisted Travel Stories

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0241140439 ISBN 13: 9780241140437

Publisher: Hamish Hamilton, 1999

From the editor of the bestselling DISCO BISCUITS, a definitive collection of alternative travel writing. With brand new stories from 15 top cult authors, FORTUNE HOTEL fills the vacuum left between conventional travel narratives and backpacker tourist guides. From the Khao San Road to Ibiza and Mexico, FORTUNE HOTEL will capture the true travelling spirit, whether it's jumping into a bullring in Salamanca, geting kidnapped in Lebanon, or dancing on the beach at a Full Moon Party in Thailand. This book will NOT be about: elephant trekking in India; the anthropology of African tribes; the quirky ways of Italian family life; the lost world of the Raj; or climbing high mountains.

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Review:

From the moment that we see the jacket, where half of the words are back-to-front and upside down, 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 postmodern 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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