Paradise Updated, Mic Looby’s first novel, is a scathing satire on the tourism industry, in particular the guidebook business. Looby, who worked for many years as an editor and author at Lonely Planet, seems to know his stuff; his novel reads like a thinly veiled dig at his former employer, now a global enterprise.

Paradise Updated is witty, slick and funny in parts. Looby’s imagination goes to town in the creation of Maganda, a fictitious tourist trap of an island in the Pacific, complete with hordes of backpackers, littered beaches and a totalitarian régime. The stage-like unreality of his descriptions undermines any serious point that Looby may want to make about the deleterious impact of tourism on a nation’s spirit and culture.