Dave Eggers

Karen Joy Fowler

Alexander McCall Smith

DBC Pierre

Marina Lewycka

Francine Prose

Lloyd Jones

Sophie Cunningham

Fiona Kidman

M J Hyland

From Lonely Planet, the world's leading travel guide publisher, Better Than Fiction 2, the follow-up to 2012's Better Than Fiction, is a second serving of true travel stories told by some of the world's best fiction writers including Dave Eggers, Jane Smiley and Karen Joy Fowler. Varied in place, plot and voice, these are stirring and evocative pieces that all share one common characteristic-they manifest a passion for the precious gift of travel, from its unexpected but inevitably enriching lessons about other peoples and places, to the truths, sometimes uncomfortable but always enlarging, it reveals about ourselves. By turns comic, dramatic, and moving - from Francine Prose's confrontation of the mysteries of India to DBC Pierre's search for Hemingway's muse in Italy - these 30 short tales reveal the joys, perils, and surprises of travel, and that truth can often be stranger (and better) than fiction. Whether on a plane en route to your own travel adventure, or at home settling in for a vicarious experience of world adventures, embark on this literary journey around the world and explore your passion for travel now! Authors: Lonely Planet, Don George, Dave Eggers, Jane Smiley, Karen Joy Fowler, Stefan Merrill Block, Francine Prose, DBC Pierre, Fiona Kidman, Alexander McCall Smith, Keija Parssinen, MJ Hyland, Catherine Lacey, Rebecca Dinerstein, Lloyd Jones, Porochista Khakpour, Jack Livings, Marina Lewycka, Lydia Millet, Suzanne Joinson, Sophie Cunningham, Christina Nichol, Mandy Sayer, Steven Amsterdam, Marie-Helene Bortino, Shirley Streshinsky, Steven Hall, David Shafer, Avi Duckor-Jones, Lily King, Aliya Whitely, and Natalie Baszile About Lonely Planet: Started in 1973, Lonely Planet has become the world's leading travel guide publisher with guidebooks to every destination on the planet, as well as an award-winning website, a suite of mobile and digital travel products, and a dedicated traveller community. Lonely Planet's mission is to enable curious travellers to experience the world and to truly get to the heart of the places they find themselves in. Lonely Planet's award-winning list travel literature anthologies include An Innocent Abroad (Independent Publishers Award, Silver for Essays, 2015) and A Fork in the Road (Lowell Thomas Award, Bronze for Travel Book, 2014; James Bear Award, Nominated for Travel Fiction, 2014). 'Lonely Planet. It's on everyone's bookshelves; it's in every traveller's hands. It's on mobile phones. It's on the Internet. It's everywhere, and it's telling entire generations of people how to travel the world.' -- Fairfax Media 'Lonely Planet guides are, quite simply, like no other.' - New York Times Lonely Planet guides have won the TripAdvisor Traveler's Choice Award in 2012, 2013, 2014, and 2015. Important Notice: The digital edition of this book may not contain all of the images found in the physical edition.

True adventures from 30 great fiction writers

Better than Fiction 2

Hailed by the critics and lauded by readers for its riotously funny and scathing portrayal of America in an age of trial by media, materialism, and violence, Vernon God Little was an international sensation when it was first published in 2003 and awarded the prestigious Man Booker Prize. The memorable portrait of America is seen through the eyes of a wry, young, protagonist. Fifteen-year-old Vernon narrates the story with a cynical twang and a four-letter barb for each of his townsfolk, a medley of characters. With a plot involving a school shooting and death-row reality TV shows, Pierre’s effortless prose and dialogue combine to form a novel of postmodern gamesmanship.

Vernon God Little

When DBC Pierre burst onto the scene in 2003, he arrived with no particular literary education. Finding he had something to say, he made the journey solo to that place where dreams and demons live, to try and turn feelings into words. Part biography, part reflection and part practical guide, Release the Bats explores the mysteries of why and how we tell stories, and the craft of writing fiction. DBC Pierre reveals everything he learned the hard way.

Writing Your Way Out Of It

Release the Bats

A Novel

Ludmila's Broken English

Big Snake Little Snake is a cascade of true stories by DBC Pierre, recorded while on his way to make a short film with a parrot in Trinidad, which not only examines the nature of gambling, the love affair between gambler and game and the mindset of obsessive practitioners, but aims to shed light on the invisible odds and outrageous chances of everyday life on Earth. Snakes symbolise a road in a Trinidadian numbers game based on dreams and superstition. The inquiry was prompted by a little snake on Pierre's doorstep. 'If writers were athletes, DBC Pierre would be hanging out with the skydivers, the stunt-snowboarders and the white-water rafters' Independent 'One of the most original and seriously funny narrative voices' Observer

An Inquiry into Risk

Big Snake Little Snake

Willkommen im The Cliffs, dem abgründigsten Hotel Großbritanniens Ariel Panek möchte eigentlich nur ein paar unbeschwerte Tage mit seiner Studentin und Geliebten Zeva verbringen, am Rande eines Informatik-Kongress in Amsterdam. Doch dort kommt er nie an und landet stattdessen im Küstenhotel The Cliffs – einem Ort ohne Verbindung zur Außenwelt. Dort ist er dem schrulligen Hotelbesitzer und seinen einzigen Gästen, einer neurotischen Familie, die die »Borgias« genannt werden, ausgeliefert. Der Booker-Prize-Träger DBC Pierre ist zurück. Skurril wie Wes Anderson und auf der Höhe der Zeit erzählt DBC Pierre von der Liebe im digitalen Zeitalter und der verlorenen Kunst, auf das zu vertrauen, was einen unmittelbar umgibt. »Rasant erzählt, getragen von unnach-ahmlichen Figuren und mit einem Plot, der Agatha Christie alle Ehre macht.« The Mail on Sunday »Wenn es einen Autor gibt, der die gefährliche Ironie unserer Gegenwart einfangen kann, dann ist es DBC Pierre.« The Guardian

Roman

Frühstück mit den Borgias

"If rape or arson, poison or the knife Has wove no pleasing patterns in the stuff Of this drab canvas we accept as life - It is because we are not bold enough!" Charles Baudelaire If you are familiar with the explosive End Times Trilogy (Vernon God Little, Ludmila's Broken English, Lights Out in Wonderland) by DBC Pierre, you will be well-acclimatised to the heady heights traversed in this collection. Drawing on memoir and a life lived in pursuit of sensation, but always ignited by the flame of fiction, Petit Mallegories take us further into the imagination of one of the most radically original prose stylists of the past decade. Accompanied by dozens of illustrations and photographic 'evidence', the stories here inhabit worlds defined by appetite, excess and transcendence. Whether through food, drink, sex, drugs, or a fantastic cocktail of all four, the impulse in this book is towards epiphany. And the inevitable hangover that follows. But even that (or those) in the world of DBC Pierre can be nourishing.

Petit Mal

Onheilspellende roman van de auteur van Vernon God Little. Wanneer Ariel Panek vanuit de VS naar een congres in Amsterdam vliegt, moet zijn vliegtuig vanwege dichte mist noodgedwongen op Londen Stansted landen. Omdat telefoon en internet eruit liggen, kan hij op geen enkele manier meer contact krijgen met de buitenwereld. Ariel wordt ondergebracht in een verlaten pension aan de Engelse kust. Enigszins verward door de jetlag valt hij hier binnen bij een familie die iets lijkt te herdenken. Maar dit is geen gewone viering. En dit is geen gewone familie. Al snel beseft Panek dat hij beland is in een sinister universum waar geen ontkomen aan is. Ontbijt met de Borgias is een gewaagde, sardonische en vooral spannende roman. DBC Pierre baarde wereldwijd opzien met zijn romandebuut Vernon God Little, waarmee hij in 2003 de Man Booker Prize won. Ontbijt met de Borgias schreef hij voor de ‘Hammer List’, de literaire vleugel van de befaamde horrorfilmproducent. ‘Briljant geschreven, de thema’s zijn goed doordacht, de uitvoering is knap... Het probleem? De spanning. Die is bijna ondraaglijk.’ Tor.com ‘Een betoverend verhaal.’ The Irish Examiner

Ontbijt met de Borgias

Gabriel Brockwell, aesthete, poet, philosopher, disaffected twenty-something decadent, is thinking terminal. His philosophical enquiries, the abstractions he indulges, and how these relate to a life lived, all point in the same direction. His destination is Wonderland. The nature and style of the journey is all that's to be decided. Taking in London, Tokyo, Berlin and the Galapagos Islands, Lights Out In Wonderland documents Gabriel Brockwell's remarkable global odyssey. Committed to the pursuit of pleasure and in search of the Bacchanal to obliterate all previous parties, Gabriel's adventure takes in a spell in rehab, a near-death experience with fugu ovaries, a sexual encounter with an octopus, and finally an orgiastic feast in the bowels of Berlin's majestic Tempelhof Airport. Along the way we see a character disintegrate and re-shape before our eyes. Lights Out In Wonderland carries you through its many corridors of delight and horror on the back of Gabriel's voice, which is at once skeptical, idealistic, broken and optimistic. An allegorical banquet and a sly commentary on these End Times and the march towards insensate banality, DBC Pierre's third novel completes a loose trilogy of fictions, each of which stands alone as a joyful expression of the human spirit.

Lights Out in Wonderland

DBC Pierre's second novel charts the unlikely meeting between East and West that follows Ludmila Derev's appearance on a Russian brides website. Determined to save her family from starvation in the face of marauding Gnez troops, Ludmila's journey into the world and womanhood is an odyssey of sour wit, even sourer vodka, and a Soviet tractor probably running on goat's piss. Thousands of miles to the West, the Heath twins are separated after 33 years conjoined at the abdomen. Released for the first time from an institution rumoured to have been founded for an illegitimate child of Charles II, they are suddenly plunged into a round-the-clock world churning with opportunity, rowdy with the chatter of freedom, democracy, self-empowerment and sex. A wild and raucous picaresque dripping with flavours of British bacon and nasty Russian vodka, Ludmila's Broken English is a tale of tango-ing twins on a journey into the unknown. A ride so outrageously improbable it just may happen, DBC Pierre's second novel confirms his place in the ranks of today's most original storytellers.

FROM THE BOOKER PRIZE-WINING AUTHOR OF VERNON GOD LITTLE 'Pierre's high-risk prose explores and expands the cartoonish, taboo-busting outer edges of literary possibility.' -- Independent *** It's a big bad world out there, in Dopamine City. All Lonnie Cush wants is to keep his kids safe. But Shelby-Ann - his little girl, the maddening apple of his eye - has other ideas: Shelby-Ann wants her first smartphone. So new realities are rocketing their way to 37 Palisade Row, where everything will change, every day, and at mortal speed. Until Lonnie finds himself in a stitch: he'll have to join this new world, or wither in it. Or can he mastermind a vanishing act? The story of a hapless father's love and loss, and a speedball, starburst satire, Meanwhile in Dopamine City is a passionate, freewheeling work from the winner of the Booker Prize: a riotous cry for the soul and the flesh and the heart in the cooling bathwater of our automatic times.

DBC Pierre

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