Bad Tourist
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ORDER BAD TOURIST FROM THE PRESS HERE ORDER BAD TOURIST FROM AMAZON HERE Both a memoir in travel essays and an anti-guidebook, Bad Tourist takes us across four continents to fifteen countries, showing us what not to do when traveling. A woman learning to claim her own desires and adventures, Suzanne Roberts encounters lightning and landslides, sharks and piranha-infested waters, a nightclub drugging, burning bodies, and brief affairs as she searches for the love of her life and finally herself. Throughout her travels Roberts tries hard not to be a bad tourist, but owing to her cultural blind spots, things don’t always go as planned. Fearlessly confessional, shamelessly funny, and wholly unapologetic, Roberts offers a refreshingly honest account of the joys and absurdities of confronting new landscapes and cultures, as well as new versions of herself. Raw, bawdy, and self-effacing, Bad Tourist is a journey packed with delights and surprises—both of the greater world and of the mysterious workings of the heart. * Gold Medal Winner for Best Travel Book from the Independent Publisher's Book Awards * Gold Medal in Travel for the Next Generation Indie Book Award * Bronze Medal in Travel in the Foreword INDIES Excellence Awards * Bronze Prize Winner for Best Travel Book from the North American Travel Journalists Association * Finalist in Travel in the National Indies Excellence Awards * Finalist for the Gilda Award, Story Circle's Women's Book Award for Humor 
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Praise for Bad Tourist
"In this collection of essays, Roberts recounts her adventures while traveling mostly solo to 15 countries. Along the way she navigates mishaps both large and small, from a dangerous mudslide in Peru to a tricky romantic entanglement in Greece. Each experience offers a chance to probe her inner “bad tourist,” as she wrestles with issues of privilege, cultural blind spots, and her own insecurities on a journey to self-discovery." — National Geographic
"I love travel, armchair and otherwise, so I knew it would be a pleasure letting Suzanne Roberts take me around the world on a shoestring, from India's Grand Elephant Festival, to the steppes of Mongolia on the trail of Genghis Khan, to the cool tiles of one or another one star bathroom wondering if this would be the time she'd puke herself to death. Even more satisfying is her honesty, courage and eventual clarity, as she tackles her own understories--family dysfunction and alcoholism, internalized misogyny, and what the climate catastrophe means for the travel addicted among us--combining these essays into a thoroughly relatable journey of the heart." — Pam Houston, author, Deep Creek: Finding Hope In The High Country
“If Michel de Montaigne and Chelsea Handler could get together in a bar in some far-flung part of the world and get good and drunk, they might dream up a book like this. This is not your parents’ travel writing! If you’re thirsting for a literary triple shot of sex, booze, and misadventures, Bad Tourist is your passport to an adventure you won’t want to come home from.” — Michael P. Branch, author of Rants from the Hill and How to Cuss in Western
“I’m breathless after this trip around the globe with Suzanne Roberts. Bad Tourist makes beautiful the absurdity and heartbreak accompanying us whenever we leave home. Roberts’ intimate, fiercely honest narrative voice imbues these realities with grace and demonstrates just how much is to be gained by living a life in present tense.”
— Kathryn Miles, author of Quakeland: On the Road to America’s Next Devastating Earthquake
“Suzanne Roberts’ journey—both inward and outward—is illuminated by eloquent portraits of countries, cultures, and compassionate insights into human nature. I love this book.” — Ann Marie Brown, Travel Writer and Guidebook Author
“These thoughtful, hilarious, lusty essays will either have you renewing your passport or blowtorching it for good. Suzanne Roberts may be a bad tourist, but she’s one hell of a great writer.” — Gayle Brandeis, author of The Art of Misdiagnosis
“In an age where cultures, people, and places are so easily objectified, reduced to abstractions, commodities, or statistics, Bad Tourist is a collection that returns us, thankfully, to earth. Across India and Mongolia to Mexico and California, Suzanne Roberts shares the view at ground level, the brutality and grace and sometimes transcendence in the lives of everyday people. She reminds us that travel can be an act of remembrance. This is an important and moving work.” — David Miller, Travel Writer and Documentary Filmmaker
Reviews of Bad Tourist
Hippocampus, June 2021
National Geographic, April 2021
Tahoe Quarterly, December 2020
10 New Indie Books to Add to Your Stack, October 2020
Foreword Book Reviews, October 2020
Chicago Review of Books, October 2020
Canadian Traveller, October 2020
Bookin' with Sunny, October 2020
Ridge Writers on Books, October 2020
Travel Books and Movies, September 2020
National Geographic, April 2021
Tahoe Quarterly, December 2020
10 New Indie Books to Add to Your Stack, October 2020
Foreword Book Reviews, October 2020
Chicago Review of Books, October 2020
Canadian Traveller, October 2020
Bookin' with Sunny, October 2020
Ridge Writers on Books, October 2020
Travel Books and Movies, September 2020