After a decade spent on the road, renowned travel writer Brendan Shanahan is back with Mr Snack and the Lady Water, a collection of darkly funny and unexpected travel writing.

In the title piece, Shanahan embarks on what is supposed to be a luxury cruise, only to find himself on a three-day endurance test aboard a leaking barge on China’s Yangtze River in the company of a mysterious roommate, a pair of neurotic American spinsters and a thousand baseball-capped tourists. Other stories include his sight-unseen, online purchase of a house in Las Vegas, his brief career in Bollywood and a mediation on white guilt in post-apartheid South Africa.

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 hotel mirror at 3 am and asked ‘Where am I?’