Riding the Rails with Paul Theroux: The Great Railway Bazaar, the Old Patagonian Express, and Ghost Train to the Eastern Star

The international bestselling author records his many insights and adventures traversing the world by train in these 3 classic travel memoirs. The Great Railway Bazaar In 1973, Paul Theroux embarked on his now-legendary journey from the United Kingdom through Europe, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia. 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. The Old Patagonia Express Starting with a rush-hour subway ride to South Station in Boston to catch the Lake Shore Limited to Chicago, Paul Theroux takes a grand railway adventure first across the United States and then south through Mexico, Central America, and across the Andes until he winds up on the meandering Old Patagonian Express steam engine. Ghost Train to the Eastern Star Thirty years after the epic journey chronicled in The Great Railway Bazaar, Paul Theroux retraces his 25,000-mile journey to witness and experience a landscape drastically transformed by the intervening decades. The Soviet Union has collapsed and China has risen; India booms while Burma smothers under dictatorship; Vietnam flourishes in the aftermath of the havoc America was unleashing on it the last time Theroux passed through.

About the Author :
PAUL THEROUX is the author of many highly acclaimed books. His novels include The Lower River and The Mosquito Coast, and his renowned travel books include Ghost Train to the Eastern Star and Dark Star Safari. He lives in Hawaii and Cape Cod.

Review :
Praise for The Great Railway Bazaar "Funny, sardonic, wonderfully sensuous and evocative . . . Consistently entertaining." --New York Times Book Review "It's as if Graham Greene and Joseph Conrad decided to rewrite Baedeker's guides to Asia . . . [A] great read." --Newsweek "Wonderful . . . Full of zest and adventure." --Washington Post "A travel book of the first magnitude." --Business Week "In the fine old tradition of travel for fun and adventure . . . Compulsive reading." --Graham Greene "More than a rich and original entertainment. His people, places, and asides will stay a long time jostling in the mind of the reader." --V. S. Pritchett Praise for The Old Patagonian Express "Surely . . . the best book of train travel ever written." --Jan Morris "Like good conversation, a good travel book consists of two kinds of material: narrative and comment. Theroux's comments come in the form of little essays. Interesting as these excursions are, his narrative is better--his rendering of a combined soccer game and riot in San Salvador is superb--and his dialogue best of all." --Paul Fussell, New York Times Book Review Praise for Ghost Train to the Eastern Star "Readers will find his usual wonderfully evocative landscapes and piquant character sketches. No matter where his journey takes him, Theroux always sends back dazzling post cards." --Publishers Weekly, starred review "Theroux wanders to places that scarcely cross other travel writers' minds, among them Vientiane ('a sleepy town on the banks of the muddy river, famous for its cheap beer') and Phnom Penh ('scruffy, rather beaten-up . . . like a scarred human face in which its violent past was evident'). He also keeps up a running argument with the books he reads along the way, to say nothing of his contemporaries (Chatwin never traveled alone, he harrumphs, and neither does his bête noire Naipaul)." --Kirkus Reviews "Brilliant. No one writes with Theroux's head-on intensity and raptness, and his descriptions made me want to jump on the next plane to Istanbul (and also, of course, to many of the other places he evokes). I particularly loved the spectral motif, the ghosts and shadows and underground presences that flit through the narrative, giving the whole a half-seen and haunting dimension that no book of travels I've ever read conjures up." --Pico Iyer "As thoughtful and observant as ever. His trip finds Theroux reflecting not only on changes to the landscape but also to himself. A wonderful book infused with the insights of maturity. It's a reminder that in this age of increasingly homogenous urban centers and easy air travel, those who really want to discern national differences should stay on the ground." --Booklist, starred review