Description: Illustrated by interviews with women and men in the tourist resorts in the Sinai, Egypt, this book opens up the debate surrounding sex tourism by examining the way in which holiday romances between western women and 'native' men are linked to a much wider romanticism of place and people, which is used to sell these destinations. The work provides insights into gender issues to do with globalization, travel and sexuality.
Review Quotes: 'This book will appeal to anyone who has ever fancied the waiter on vacation. Shifting attention from male to female sex tourists, and from sex itself to the wider context of sexualised tourism and tourist geographies, it also makes a serious and provocative intervention in debates about sexuality, gender and imperialism.' Richard Phillips, University of Liverpool UK. 'Carefully researched and thoughtfully written, Jacobs offers a rich analysis of the complexities and contradictions underlying tourist encounters between European women and "local" men in the Sinai. While postcolonial tourism has generated no shortage of theoretical speculation, this book succeeds by actually conveying the voices of women and men, tourists and locals, "moderns" and "non-moderns" as they reflect upon their encounters with Oriental and Occidental "others".' Tim Oakes, University of Colorado at Boulder, USA 'This is a lucid account of tourism and draws usefully upon postcolonial understandings of the historical-socio-economic web that exists between "the West and the Rest" to understand the intricate relationships between European women and Egyptian men. Jacobs offers a salutary reminder that the longing to "lose oneself" is always problematic and never neutral, and that the desire "to leave the hell of work to a paradise of leisure" is always freighted with historical-socio-cultural resonances.' Times Higher Education