Land and its People

'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 DUNHAMIn The Land and its People, his first new collection since Happy-Go-Lucky, David Sedaris reflects on what it means to be a foreigner, a brother, a lifelong friend. He tries on the role of carer after his boyfriend Hugh's hip-replacement surgery, and both succeeds and fails. He buys his sister a cape and discusses his brother with a jaded Duolingo bot. He walks dozens of miles with his friend Dawn and challenges her to eat a truck tire. 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.There is sadness here - scrolling through his address book, he realizes how many dear friends are now deceased - but also delight: he revels in authors' biographies, the malapropism that becomes a decades-long inside joke, and pair of well-made cotton underpants. He is bitten by a dog. A train passenger vomits in his face. A woman on the street late at night either sexually harasses him or doesn't. Look how hard it is to be alive!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 this 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