In Batting on the Bosphorus, a hilarious and eccentric traveler's tale, Scotsman Angus Bell leaves the Montreal magazine industry and sets off in his Skoda to discover a hidden cricketing world across central and Eastern Europe. From Estonia to Crimea, Bell learns that Slavs are playing the Englishman's game.

Between games, Bell is pursued by the KGB, becomes embroiled in a drug bust on the Midnight Express, and seeks emergency treatment from a Romanian dentist. His travel companions include a Guatemalan anarchist, a Ukrainian chicken, and a tobacco farmer who played cricket and rugby for Rhodesia.

"Like A.A. Gill, another Scottish-born travel writer with a gimlet eye, Bell's participatory journalism is immersed in snappy, concise observations that create genuine belly laughs." -- Globe & Mail

"Bill Bryson meets Jack Kerouac, peppered with Judith Chalmers...Priceless!" -- All Out Cricket

Agnus Bell is a 27-year-old, whisky-swilling Scotsman with a first-class degree in English, Flying Saucers and Space Studies. He has visited 40 countries, and has written for the South African Sunday Times, Inside Sport in Australia, the US Student Traveller, Cricinfo in India and The Wisden Cricketer in the UK. Originally self-published to great acclaim in 2006, Batting on the Bosphorus is Angus Bell's first book.

Angus Bell's profile page