Sideways: Travels with Kafka, Hunter S. & Kerouac

By Patrick O'Neil

Two days before I left, I sat down with my brand-spanking-new green backpack, bought at greatly reduced cost because a couple of the straps were faulty. Later, they unexpectedly released and I was dragged to the ground as the last train out of Heidelberg rolled away without me…

Student by day, copyeditor and bartender by night and in love for the first time, Patrick O’Neil wanted something more. He wanted to be Franz Kafka. Problem was, he didn’t suffer from tuberculosis, nor was he Bohemian, Czech or Jewish. Instead he was a chain-smoking 21-year-old Australian university student with lamb chop sideburns who wore the same pair of dirty brown corduroy flares every day. But he wasn’t going to let that stop him.

Inspired by his literary heroes, Paddy hits the road in search of adventure and inspiration. He wants to wallow with Franz; to be the story with Hunter; and to ride with the dreamers and Jack.

Paddy comes to write his own path as a planned seven-month trip stretches to seven years spent on the road or planning to get back there. He abandons the track beaten by his fellow twentysomething travellers to take the reader from Sufi tribes and psychedelic trances in the Sahara to gangstas, pistols and pirates in Kingston. Written with an eye for the absurd and a flair for comedy, Sideways: Travels with Kerouac, Kafka & Hunter S. Thompson is an irresistible blend of adventure and occasional foolhardiness, chance encounters and unlikely friendships, humour and hope.

Forthcoming from Penguin Australia, March 2009

• Year of Publication: 2009
• Genre: Non-fiction
• Audience: Adult