The Naked Tourist: In Search of Adventure and Beauty in the Age of the Airport Mall - Softcover

Osborne, Lawrence

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0865477418 ISBN 13: 9780865477414

Publisher: North Point Press, 2007

Synopsis

From the theme resorts of Dubai to the jungles of Papua New Guinea, a disturbing but hilarious tour of the exotic east--and of the tour itself

Sick of producing the bromides of the professional travel writer, Lawrence Osborne decided to explore the psychological underpinnings of tourism itself. He took a six-month journey across the so-called Asian Highway--a swathe of Southeast Asia that, since the Victorian era, has seduced generations of tourists with its manufactured dreams of the exotic Orient. And like many a lost soul on this same route, he ended up in the harrowing forests of Papua, searching for a people who have never seen a tourist.

What, Osborne asks, are millions of affluent itinerants looking for in these endless resorts, hotels, cosmetic-surgery packages, spas, spiritual retreats, sex clubs, and "back to nature" trips? What does tourism, the world's single largest business, have to sell? A travelogue into that heart of darkness known as the Western
mind, The Naked Tourist is the most mordant and ambitious work to date from the author of The Accidental Connoisseur, praised by The New York Times Book Review as "smart, generous, perceptive, funny, sensible."

About this title

Review:

"[Osborne] grabs the bull by the horns . . . Through the most surreal environments (the fabricated islands of Dubai, the medical resorts of Thailand) he is funny, intelligent, insightful and honest." --Max Watman, The New York Times Book Review

About the Author:

Lawrence Osborne has written for The New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, and other publications, and is the author of several books, including The Accidental Connoisseur. Born in England, he lives in New York.

About this edition

• Publisher: North Point Press
• Publication date: 2007
• ISBN 10: 0865477418
• ISBN 13: 9780865477414
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 294