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| Author: Paul Theroux |
In Ghost
Train to the Eastern Star,
Theroux recreates an epic
journey he took thirty years
ago and recorded in his book, The
Great Railway Bazaar
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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,
Myanmar, China, and Japan,
providing his penetrating
observations on the changes
these countries have undergone.
Brilliant, caustic, and
totally addictive, this is
Theroux at his best.
First published in 2008
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From Publishers
Weekly
Acclaimed travel writer
and novelist Theroux
hasn’t lost his
affection for trains,
but his view of the scenery
outside has darkened
in his latest odyssey.
Reprising the itinerary
of his 1973 The
Great Railway Bazaar
(with
a detour around Iran
and Afghanistan into
the Central Asian republics),
Theroux takes a contrarian
stance toward the transformation
of Asia over the intervening
decades. The persistence
of familiar, authentic,
rural decrepitude usually
heartens him, while the
teeming modernity of
great cities—the
computer-and-oxcart madhouses
of Mumbai and Bangalore,
the neurotic orderliness
of Singapore, the soullessness
of Tokyo—appalls.
The book is often an
elegy for fixity in a
globalizing age when
everyone is a traveler
anxious to get to America
and “the world
is deteriorating and
shrinking to a ball of
bungled desolation.” Fortunately,
Theroux is too rapt an
observer of his surroundings
and himself to wallow
long in reaction or nostalgia;
readers will find his
usual wonderfully evocative
landscapes and piquant
character sketches (and,
everywhere, prostitutes
soliciting him—most
stylishly in Hanoi, where
they ride up on motorcycles
crying, “You come!
Boom-boom!”). No
matter where his journey
takes him, Theroux always
sends back dazzling post
cards.
©
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$15.95 (softcover)
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Other titles by Paul Theroux:
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