In Turkey I Am Beautiful

Two years after his first visit, travel writer Brendan Shanahan returned to Turkey. After catching up with old friends in Istanbul, he set off on a journey in the country’s secretive east where, among other adventures, he found himself in the middle of a gunfight, was propositioned by a gang of teenage boys and swam to Armenia in his underpants. Returning to Istanbul, Brendan agreed to run a friend’s carpet shop. With only the dubious help of a loveable but wildly unstable drug addict, the results were occasionally disastrous, frequently hilarious and often poignant.

Brendan Shanahan is a writer based in Sydney and Las Vegas. He writes regularly for various publications internationally and is the author of The Secret Life of the Gold Coast (2004), In Turkey I am Beautiful (2008) and Mr Snack and The Lady Water (2013). In Turkey I Am Beautiful was praised as ‘laugh out loud funny’ by the Sydney Morning Herald, named ‘one of the best travel books ever’ by the Sun Herald and listed in the year’s 10 best non-fiction works by ABC Radio National.