The Unbearable Lightness of Being a Prawn Cracker is a collection of Will Self's Real Meals column for the New Statesman. Covering such things as London Cheesecake, Pizza Express, ready meals and fast food cuisine. The title is a play on Milan Kundera's The Unbearable Lightness of Being.

The collection of columns covers a variety of non-traditional culinary experiences to provide a counterpoint to the more idealistic style of food reviewing. Self's stated aim for the column was as follows:

Most food writing and restaurant criticism is concerned with the ideal, with how by cooking this, or dining there, you can somehow ingurgitate a new - or at any rate improved - social, aesthetic and even spiritual persona. I aimed to turn this proposition on its head, and instead of commenting on where and what people would ideally like to eat I would consider where and what they actually did: the ready meals, buffet snacks and - most importantly - fast food that millions of Britons chomp upon in the go-round of their often hurried and dyspeptic lives.^[1]

Benedicte Page writing for The Guardian observed...

"...it sees Self take an entertaining trip around the less celebrated of our eateries while dissecting his own fast-food addictions."^[2]