Download or read book The Great Railway Bazaar written by Paul Theroux and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This book was released on 2006-06-01 with total page 406 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The acclaimed author recounts his epic journey across Europe and Asia in this international bestselling classic of travel literature: “Compulsive reading” (Graham Greene). In 1973, Paul Theroux embarked on a four-month journey by train from the United Kingdom through Europe, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia. In The Great Railway Bazaar, he records in vivid detail and penetrating insight the many fascinating incidents, adventures, and encounters of his grand, intercontinental tour. Asia's fabled trains—the Orient Express, the Khyber Pass Local, the Frontier Mail, the Golden Arrow to Kuala Lumpur, the Mandalay Express, the Trans-Siberian Express—are the stars of a journey that takes Theroux on a loop eastbound from London's Victoria Station to Tokyo Central, then back from Japan on the Trans-Siberian. Brimming with Theroux's signature humor and wry observations, this engrossing chronicle is essential reading for both the ardent adventurer and the armchair traveler.
Download or read book Ghost Train to the Eastern Star written by Paul Theroux and published by Emblem Editions. This book was released on 2009-08-25 with total page 513 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: National Bestseller In Ghost Train to the Eastern Star, Theroux recreates an epic journey he took thirty years ago, a giant loop by train (mostly) through Eastern Europe, Turkey, the Caucasus, Central Asia, the Indian Subcontinent, China, Japan, and Siberia. In short, he traverses all of Asia top to bottom, and end to end. In the three decades since he first travelled this route, Asia has undergone phenomenal change. The Soviet Union has collapsed, China has risen, India booms, Burma slowly smothers, and Vietnam prospers despite the havoc unleashed upon it the last time Theroux passed through. He witnesses all this and more in a 25,000 mile journey, travelling as the locals do, by train, car, bus, and foot. His odyssey takes him from Eastern Europe, still hungover from Communism, through tense but thriving Turkey, into the Caucasus, where Georgia limps back toward feudalism while its neighbour Azerbaijan revels in oil-driven capitalism. As he penetrates deeper into Asia’s heart, his encounters take on an otherworldly cast. The two chapters that follow show us Turkmenistan, a profoundly isolated society at the mercy of an almost comically egotistical dictator, and Uzbekistan, a ruthless authoritarian state. From there, he retraces his steps through India, Mayanmar, China, and Japan, providing his penetrating observations on the changes these countries have undergone. Brilliant, caustic, and totally addictive, Ghost Train to the Eastern Star is Theroux at his very best.
Download or read book Riding the Iron Rooster written by Paul Theroux and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This book was released on 2006-12-08 with total page 533 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The acclaimed travel writer chronicles a year of train travel across China in a revealing travelogue that “gives the reader much to relish and think about” (Publishers Weekly). The author of the train travel classics The Great Railway Bazaar and The Old Patagonian Express, takes to the rails once again in this account of his epic journey through China. The always irascible, infectiously curious author “is in top form as he describes the barren deserts of Mongolia and Xinjiang, the ice forests of Manchuria and the dry hills of Tibet. He captures their otherworldly, haunting appearances perfectly. He is also right on target when he talks about the ugliness of China's poorly planned, hastily built cities” (Mark Salzman, The New York Times). Theroux hops aboard a train as part of a tour group in London and sets out for China's border. He then spends a year traversing the country, where he pieces together a fascinating snapshot of a unique moment in history. From sweeping and desolate natural landscapes to the dense metropolises of Shanghai, Beijing, and Canton, Theroux offers an unforgettable portrait of a magnificent land and an extraordinary people.
Download or read book The Last Train to Zona Verde written by Paul Theroux and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This book was released on 2013 with total page 373 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The world's most acclaimed travel writer journeys through western Africa from Cape Town to the Congo.
Download or read book Deep South written by Paul Theroux and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This book was released on 2015 with total page 485 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Paul Theroux has spent fifty years crossing the globe, adventuring in the exotic, seeking the rich history and folklore of the far away. Now, for the first time, in his tenth travel book, Theroux explores a piece of America--the Deep South. He finds there a paradoxical place, full of incomparable music, unparalleled cuisine, and yet also some of the nation's worst schools, housing, and unemployment rates. It's these parts of the South, so often ignored, that have caught Theroux's keen traveler's eye."--
Download or read book The Great Railway Bazaar written by Paul Theroux and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This book was released on 2006 with total page 362 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this unique and hugely entertaining railway odyssey, Theroux vividly recounts his travels--and the people, places, and landscapes he encountered--on the Orient Express, the Khyber Mail, and the Trans-Siberian Express, through such countries as Turkey, Iran, India, Southeast Asia, Japan, and the Soviet Union.
Download or read book Murder in Mount Holly written by Paul Theroux and published by Grove/Atlantic, Inc.. This book was released on 2011-12-06 with total page 100 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A Vonnegut tinged absurdist satire . . . (a) tightly paced, expertly drawn comic romp” from the New York Times–bestselling author of The Mosquito Coast (LitReactor). Paul Theroux, one of the world’s most popular authors, both for his travel books and his fiction, has produced an off-beat story of 1960s weirdos unlike anything he has ever written. During the time of Lyndon Johnson’s presidency, Herbie Gneiss is forced to leave college to get a job. His income from the Kant-Brake toy factory, which manufactures military toys for children, keeps his chocolate-loving mother from starvation. Mr. Gibbon, a patriotic veteran of three wars, also works at Kant-Brake. When Herbie is drafted, Mr. Gibbon falls in love with Herbie’s mother and they move in together at Miss Ball’s rooming house. Since Herbie is fighting for his country, Mr. Gibbon feels that he, too, should do something for his country and convinces Miss Ball and Mrs. Gneiss to join him in the venture. They decide to rob the Mount Holly Trust Company because it is managed by a small dark man who is probably a communist. There are some complications. Combine Donald E. Westlake with Abby Hoffman, add a bit of Gore Vidal at his most vitriolic, and you will have Murder in Mount Holly. “Parodies the American political fringe at a time when flags burned, hippies protested and commies lurked everywhere . . . you’ll have little difficulty inserting today’s fringe characters into Theroux’s lampoon.” —Star Tribune “The geezer psychopath finally gets his due . . . The fun here is in how hateful the characters are.” —The New York Times Book Review
Download or read book Sunrise with Seamonsters written by Paul Theroux and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This book was released on 1986 with total page 388 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: " ... Collection of decidedly opinionated articles, essays, and ruminations, spanning two decades ..."--Page 4 of cover
Download or read book On the Plain of Snakes written by Paul Theroux and published by Eamon Dolan Books. This book was released on 2019 with total page 459 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Legendary travel writer Paul Theroux drives the entire length of the US-Mexico border, then goes deep into the hinterland, on the back roads of Chiapas and Oaxaca, to uncover the rich, layered world behind today's brutal headlines. Paul Theroux has spent his life crisscrossing the globe in search of the histories and peoples that give life to the places they call home. Now, as immigration debates boil around the world, Theroux has set out to explore a country key to understanding our current discourse: Mexico. Just south of the Arizona border, in the desert region of Sonora, he finds a place brimming with vitality, yet visibly marked by both the US Border Patrol looming to the north and mounting discord from within. With the same humanizing sensibility he employed in Deep South, Theroux stops to talk with residents, visits Zapotec mill workers in the highlands, and attends a Zapatista party meeting, communing with people of all stripes who remain south of the border even as their families brave the journey north. From the writer praised for his "curiosity and affection for humanity in all its forms" (New York Times Book Review), On the Plain of Snakes is an exploration of a region in conflict.
Download or read book The Kingdom by the Sea written by Paul Theroux and published by HMH. This book was released on 2006-06-01 with total page 371 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This “interesting, insightful book” by the author of Deep South reveals “a side of Britain few visitors see” (The New York Times Book Review). After eleven years as an American living in London, the renowned travel writer Paul Theroux set out to travel clockwise around the coast of Great Britain to find out what the British were really like. The result is this perceptive, hilarious record of the journey. Whether in Cornwall or Wales, Ulster or Scotland, the people he encountered along the way revealed far more of themselves than they perhaps intended to display to a stranger. Theroux captured their rich and varied conversational commentary with caustic wit and penetrating insight. “A sharp and funny descriptive writer . . . Theroux is a good companion.” —The Times (London)
Download or read book Last Call for the Dining Car written by Michael Kerr and published by White Lion Publishing. This book was released on 2012 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From Michael Palin to Nicholas Crane, a riveting anthology of railway travel covers every kind of train from the luxurious Orient Express to the insanely crowded commuter trains of Bombay In an age when low-cost airlines have reduced travel to a point-to-point aerial bus service, the train can still take travelers on a genuine journey, nosing through sweeping valleys, across vertiginous viaducts, and stopping at tiny halts in the middle of nowhere in the dead of night. For better or worse, it brings along its own shotgun traveling community: the delightful breakfast companions chance-met in the dining car or the crazy loner with whom one faces the prospect of sharing a sleeper compartment across the Urals. Here, Michael Kerr has gone through the archives to compile a riveting anthology of all the best railway travel that has appeared in the Daily Telegraph. Here are epic forays from Wick in northernmost Scotland all the way to Vladivostok, Moscow to Peking, and on the Sunset Express across the United States to California. Historic events such as the last day of steam in Britain and less momentous but equally emblematic experiences such as the signal failure in the Midlands are also highlighted. By turns hilarious and alarming, this is armchair travel at its very best and the perfect book indeed for a long train journey.
Download or read book Fresh Air Fiend written by Paul Theroux and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This book was released on 2001 with total page 486 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Whether it is trekking through the icy Maine woods, or journeying to a remote island in the South Pacific where the first atomic bombs were detonated, Theroux serves as both camera and the eye. This collection of essays and articles is the ultimate good read for anyone fascinated by travel.
Download or read book The Imperial Way written by Paul Theroux and published by . This book was released on 1985 with total page 136 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Chronicles an illustrated railway journey through India, from Peshawar, full of Afghan refugees, through Agra, home of the Taj Mahal, to flooded Chittagong on the Bay of Bengal.
Download or read book The Happy Isles of Oceania written by Paul Theroux and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This book was released on 2006-12-08 with total page 731 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The author of The Great Railway Bazaar explores the South Pacific by kayak: “This exhilarating epic ranks with [his] best travel books” (Publishers Weekly). In one of his most exotic and adventuresome journeys, travel writer Paul Theroux embarks on an eighteen-month tour of the South Pacific, exploring fifty-one islands by collapsible kayak. Beginning in New Zealand's rain forests and ultimately coming to shore thousands of miles away in Hawaii, Theroux paddles alone over isolated atolls, through dirty harbors and shark-filled waters, and along treacherous coastlines. Along the way, Theroux meets the king of Tonga, encounters street gangs in Auckland, and investigates a cargo cult in Vanuatu. From Australia to Tahiti, Fiji, Easter Island, and beyond, this exhilarating tropical epic is full of disarming observations and high adventure.
Download or read book Picture Palace written by Paul Theroux and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This book was released on 1978 with total page 371 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: World-famous photographer Maude Coffin Pratt has pointed her lens at the beautiful, obscure, and obscene, and at the private places and public parts of the famous, from Gertrude Stein to Graham Greene. When the seventy-year-old Maude rummages through her archives in preparation for a triumphant retrospective, the resurrected images unleash a flood of suppressed memories -- of her extraordinary life, her celebrated subjects, and the dark, painful secret at the core of her existence.
Download or read book The Consul s File written by Paul Theroux and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2011-08-04 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Award-winning writer Paul Theroux takes us on a journey through small town Malaysia through the eyes of the exuberant Spencer Savage in his breathtaking novel The Consul's File. Spencer Savage, a young American consul, is posted to Ayer Hitam, a small Malaysian town, in the 1970s. Told to close down this remote outpost in the sweltering jungle, he instead finds himself drawn to the many characters he meets among the Malays, Indians, Japanese, Chinese and the clubbable expat Brits. Through his eyes we see the rich tapestry of multi-ethnic life in post-colonial Malaysia, from adultery to murder, from ghost stories to the murky waters of diplomatic politics. It is a brilliant portrait of a vanished time, a lost landscape and scattered peoples. 'A cool and witty sequence. . . a polished and professional performance' Guardian 'Theroux's writing is at its most adventurous in The Consul's File. There is no book I can compare this to: Mr Theroux's artistry is individual, serene, yet also grainy with fierce truths' The Times American travel writer Paul Theroux is known for the rich descriptions of people and places that is often streaked with his distinctive sense of irony; his novels and collected short stories, My Other Life, The Collected Stories, My Secret History, The Lower River, The Stranger at the Palazzo d'Oro, A Dead Hand, Millroy the Magician, The Elephanta Suite, Saint Jack, The Family Arsenal, The Mosquito Coast, and his works of non-fiction, including the iconic The Great Railway Bazaar are available from Penguin.
Download or read book Saint Jack written by Paul Theroux and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2011-08-04 with total page 234 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Jack Flowers, saint or sinner, caught a passing bumboat into Singapore and got a job as a water-clerk to a Chinese ship chandler. Now, on the side, he offers girls (indeed 'anything, anything at all') to tourists, sailors, residents and expatriates, but he is haunted by his lack of worldly success and his fifty-three years weigh heavily on him. So when he agrees to act as blackmailer for the faintly sinister American, Edwin Shuck, in a plot against a general from Vietnam, he has high, not to mention wild, hopes of triumph. These are the outrageous confessions of an ingenious con man in the seedy and unforgettable world of expatriates amidst imperial ruins.
