Strange goings on in Powl Duv, a sleepy village in Kerry, Ireland, where the one-man Kerry Detective Agency (KDA) gets bogged down in one mystery after another. And what sort of place is the mysterious Powl Duv anyway? It seems to exist in a time warp. --- "My Head is Missing" is a delightful romp; on one page it's Alexander McCall Smith, turn a page - and this is a page-turner for sure - and we're in Carlos Castenada territory, or the land of Flann O'Brien, or all three together if such unlikely company is at all imaginable.

As with its European neighbours, Ireland is home to a number of festivals which celebrate the art of travel writing, the annual Lismore Festival of Travel Writing in County Waterford for example. The modern genre of travel writing as practiced by Irish writers is very different to much of what passed for travel writing in Ireland, until very recently. In the colonial context that defined Irish history and culture prior to the last century, travel writing was frequently viewed an adjunct to the all-knowing imperial gaze. It was an element in that tradition which sought to know, to define and...