AustLit

'Who is Mr Snack and why is he sharing my room? How do you avoid the attentions of a horny Norwegian Fisherman? Where are Cabbage Patch Kids born? All these questions are answered in Mr Snack and the Lady Water, a compilation of travel tales by Brendan Shanahan. In the title piece, Shanahan faces a three-day endurance test aboard a leaking barge on a China's Yangtze river in the company of a thousand spitting, baseball capped tourists. Other stories include his drunken online purchase of a home in Las Vegas, his brief career in Bollywood and a mediation on white guilt in post-apartheid South Africa. Boozy, road-soiled and a touch deviant, Shanahan's account of his 'lost years' are a comic master class, essential reading for anyone who has ever woken up in a strange bed or just stared at themselves in a mirror at 3am and asked 'Where am I?' (Publisher's blurb)