Wry Essays on Travel, Family and Human Oddities
David Sedaris turns travel, family life and everyday encounters into sharp, warm comic essays. This paperback suits readers who enjoy humorous memoir, literary essays and observant writing about human behaviour.
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The Land and Its People
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Wry Essays on Travel, Family and Human Oddities
David Sedaris turns travel, family life and everyday encounters into sharp, warm comic essays. This paperback suits readers who enjoy humorous memoir, literary essays and observant writing about human behaviour.
- Book Synopsis
-
'Very little makes me laugh. I would say the one exception is anything by David Sedaris' GRAHAM NORTON
'Sedaris is the God of the comic essay... Sedaris' only rule: be funny or perish' LENA DUNHAM
In The Land and Its People, David Sedaris investigates what it means to be a traveller, a brother, a lifelong friend.
Trying on the role of carer after his boyfriend Hugh's hip-replacement surgery, he both succeeds and fails. He covers ground with his friend Dawn and challenges her to eat a truck tire. An ambivalent Duolingo bot becomes his unlikely confidante as he attempts to describe his family in a foreign language.
Ever adding to his list of 'Countries I Have Been To,' he rides a horse named Tequila in Guatemala, buys a bespoke priest's cassock in Vatican City, and goes on safari in Kenya without taking a single photo.
Time takes its toll: Scrolling through his address book, he counts those he couldn't bear to outline and realizes how many are already gone. He is bitten by a dog and insulted by a wee train passenger. A woman on the street late at night either sexually harasses him or doesn't. It's easy to agree with the lady waving a sign that reads, 'Enough is Enough.'
And yet, life holds much to delight in: the massive testicles of a ram, a trip abroad with his sisters, a really excellent reptile video, a pair of well-made cotton underpants.
Throughout these essays - at once acerbic and tender, playful and profound - Sedaris shows how much there is to marvel at when you keep your head up and your eyes open, observing with warmth and curiosity our fascinating human species and the lands we inhabit.
'Sedaris is the premier observer of our world and its weirdness' ADAM KAY
'Wonderful' IAN McKELLEN
'Unquestionably the king of comic writing' HADLEY FREEMAN
'The funniest writer alive today' JONATHAN ROSS
- About The Author
- David Sedaris is the author of fifteen previous books, including, most recently, A Carnival of Snackery, The Best of Me, Calypso and Happy-Go-Lucky. He is a regular contributor to the New Yorker and BBC Radio 4. In 2019, he was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He is the recipient of the Thurber Prize for American Humor, the Jonathan Swift Prize for Satire and Humor, and the Terry Southern Prize for Humor. Sedaris lives in Sussex and travels regularly to the US.
- Product Details
-
- ISBN
- 9781408714133
- Format
- Paperback
- Publisher
- Abacus, (02 July 2026)
- Number of Pages
- 272
- Weight
- 296 grams
- Language
- English
- Dimensions
- 214 x 134 x 20 mm
- Categories: