Mr Snack and the Lady Water: Travel Tales From My Lost Years

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?’