Staff Pick: The Dark Tourist

If you're after interesting insight along the lines of David Farrier's Netflix series of the same name, you won't find it here. The series covers places 'off the beaten track'. 

However, in this idiosyncratic but frequently hilarious travel memoir, Joly sets out on a quest to visit destinations from which the average tourist would run a mile.

We follow Joly as he skis in Iran on segregated slopes, spends a weekend in Chernobyl, tours the assassination sites of America and becomes one of the few Westerners to be granted entry into North Korea. Eventually Dom journeys back to his roots in Beirut only to discover he was at school with Osama Bin Laden.

Funny and frightening in equal measure, unfortunately this book is rather dated now.