Paul Theroux Books

I have always liked travelers who like traveling on a whim and who can spontaneously react to a travel urges. And, if the traveler is as erudite, well-traveled and hypercritical as Paul, then the resulting sojourn will enthrall readers with delectable prose that covers a wide spectrum of topics ranging from spiritual journeys, solitude, despair, sublime happiness, humor to socio-politics. Very few travelers seem to have some many facets.

His epic journey takes him through Egypt, Sudan, Ethiopia, Uganda, Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique, Zimbabwe and South Africa. The chapter covering his visit to the Dervishes in Omdurman and highlands of Harar are particularly noteworthy. His prose takes on a surreal quality and you won't be able to avoid the vivid imagery from flashing in your mind. Then, suddenly he survives an attack from Shifta bandits on the notoriously-named Bandit Road. Equally hilarious are his interactions with (what he calls) agents of virtues missionaries and aid-workers. One of the best interactions is with a Portuguese-speaking agent of virtue from Ohio who is serving in Mozambique and exacerbating the poor people's (already miserable) lives by making them believe that they are sinners and only the Almighty can absolve (?) them. Amidst all the challenging travel he finds time to pen his erotic novella (wonder if it is out already) while warding of kids teasing him "Muzungu Muzungu"

A couple of years ago, I had written a very critical review of Patagonia Express expressing regret over Paul's critical (bordering harsh) comments and the seemingly missing spiritual side. However, since that review I have undertaken many long & dangerous journeys myself and can relate to his experiences much better. Travel is like exploring unknown realms within the self. It is a journey into the past and also into the future whilst enjoying the present. Travel will dissolve all impurities, break the deceptive veneer and will rejuvenate your mind.

He is up amongst the best travel writers of all times. Kudos!!!

I read "Dark Star Safari" on a long plane ride from Asia. It was fitting because SE Asia holds a place in my life somewhat akin to Africa in Theroux's, although unlike him, I get back to Asia on a fairly regular basis.

Theroux's observations and point of view will be familiar to anyone who has lived abroad at a key time in their life and made an effort to get beyond the usual expat and tourist destinations. Like me, Theroux encounters people who have risen in their countries, with varying outcomes. He is clearly dismayed by much of what he sees and gets cranky and, at times, paternalistic. He also reflects on his crankiness and paternalism, which tends to be rare in travel writing. Still, the book is his funniest since "Kingdom by the Sea". He is at his best lampooning foreigners, esp. aid workers, evangelical missionaries and high-end tourists (not to mention Germans and Brits), all suitable targets, in my opinion. The only missionaries who come off well are the Catholic nuns--dedicated people doing difficult work in unglamorous places and clearly enjoying their independence and distance from anything resembling authority. I've known similar Catholic clergy in SE Asia. For the places in Africa I've visited, his portraits of locals and locales are dead-on. He perfectly captures the annoying "my friend, come into my shop" world of tourist Cairo, as well as the oddly depressing sunshine of Hurghada, and the many sides of life in post-apartheid South Africa.

The book is illuuminating because Theroux toured the continent on largely local transportation, with local people, and yet, can draw on the observations of acquaintances like Nadile Goldimer. Readers unused to Theroux's crankiness or his disdain for sliminess on the part of locals or foreigners will not enjoy this book, nor will fans of the NGO movement. Hard ideological partisans of the Left & Right won't like it either. Theroux is able to be blunt, as well as sentimental in his observations, because of his knowledge and affection for the place. A sightseer's travelogue this isn't. For people who truly love the adventure of a journey and those who know what it's like to live some place and know it well enough to love it, the book will be very rewarding.

"Being in Africa was like being on a dark star."

Paul Theroux isn't a "travel writer." He is a "traveler who writes." The nature of this beast is that Theroux is totally uninhibited about discussing smells, ugly people, dirty rooms, and sad situations. He is very real in a... Paul Theroux way. Others would have a different approach to describing their travels, and adventures.

On African cities:

"Even at their best, African cities seemed to me miserable improvised anthills, attracting the poor and the desperate from the bush and turning them into thieves and devisers of cruel scams. Scamming is the survival mode in a city where tribal niceties do not apply and there are no sanctions except those of the police, a class of people who in Africa generally are little more than licensed thieves" (p. 93).

"I was in no hurry, I wasn't due anywhere, yet whenever I arrived in an African city, I wanted to leave" (p. 255).

On international aid workers:

"That was to be fairly typical of my experience with aid workers in rural Africa: they were, in general, oafish self-dramatizing prigs, and often complete bastards" (p. 146).

This is Theroux's reputation: a critical and cynical observer of people [I wonder what he really thinks!]. This book should be titled Dark Star Safari for the Thick-Skinned.

I found Dark Star Safari to be one of the best books I have read in a long time. Theroux's sometimes cynical view of Africa is simply delightful. While I must admit that I know very little about Africa, Dark Star Safari has fully dissuaded me from ever visiting or giving to any charities that might operate there. I was prepared for the standard blindly-optimistic evaluation of charities in Africa and I found Theroux's experiences, criticism and realistic assesments to be both sobering and refreshing. In addition to being an engaging travel book, Dark Star Safari is also a thought-provoking journey into the causes, conditions and inevitability of African poverty and misery. I highly recommend this great literary work to anyone with the least interest in Africa, the charities and people there, or anyone else who just likes a good book.

Dark Star Safari is a journey through the REAL Africa. From Cairo to Cape Town Paul travels along the worst roads and through the toughest villages that you won't see on a tourist safari, talking with and learning from everyone he meets along the way. From that perspective this was the most educational travel book to date that I've seen.

One of the consistent observations throughout the book is that wherever Paul traveled the detriment brought to Africa by aid workers is quite clear. Aid is not helping, and it never did. It only contributes to the under-development in Africa and only serves to keep the local despots and corrupt, stagnated governments in power. In Malawi, as in the much of the rest of Africa, the NGOs (Non-governmental Organizations) and virtue activists hire away the local teachers (who only make $27 to $67 dollars a month) offering them better pay and conditions to become food distributors. Few of the villages even have teachers any more.

The author speaks with a knowledge and history of Africa that few others possess since he had lived and worked as a teacher in Africa during the 1960s. As Paul states, foreign aid workers "&didn't realize that for forty years people had been saying the same things, and the result, after four decades, was a lower standard of living, a higher rate of illiteracy, over population, and much more disease. Foreigners working for development agencies didn't stand long. So they never discovered the full extent of their failure. Africans saw them come and go."

Labor-intensive projects are extremely rare in Africa because of self-serving foreign "aid" that require "purchases of machinery have to be made in the donor country, or that bids be restricted to firms in the donor country, or that a time limit be placed on the scheme which encourages the tendency towards large contracts and heavy spending on equipment." Paul also verifies what I had first read about in Jim Roger's Adventure Capitalist. All of the used clothing donated to churches to be distributed to "poor Africa" becomes merchandise the second the cargo ship leaves the port. When it reaches its destination it's purchased in large blocks by merchants who resell them. The author picks up some "new" clothes himself in order to avoid looking like a tourist. His T-shirt read "Top-Notch Plumbing". Of course, all this "good-well aid" does nothing but to hurt Africa's economy. There was a time, not too long ago, when some of the best tailors in the world were in Africa. But how can you be a tailor when the West sends clothes over for practically free? Why be a farmer when the West wants to feed you for free? What's the best industry in Kenya? Coffins. Coffin-making is a booming industry. In one area of Malawi the people are growing their own Maize crops but are using hybrid seeds resulting in big plants but sterile seeds. The farmers can't set aside plants as seed corn because they are all sterile! As Theroux says, "Without free seeds each year these people would starve."

What angers me the most though is what I have seen verified in other reports, namely aid workers "were no more than a maintenance crew on a power trip". Other than a Nun or two who had moved to Africa on their own accord, none of the aid workers, in other words the NGO aid workers, were happy to be there or in the slightest bit helpful to the author. They're all too busy driving around in their air-conditioned Land Rovers to get out and actually help people.

The happiest and most self-sufficient villages that Theroux encountered were, in a very consistent pattern, all out-of-the-way such that the government and aid workers ignored then and didn't mess with them.

There is much more to the book though than state of Africa's corruption. The author's adventures are incredible. It's incredible that he actually lived to tell the tale actually. If you want a romantic story of big-game hunters in Africa, ready Hemingway. If you want reality, read Theroux.

I read this book while driving from Johannesburg to the equator and back. It was therefor very immediate for me. I normally find Paul Theroux a bit tedious but certainly not this one. His desciptions are compelling and he brings to life all the awful, sad things about Africa. I fear that this beautiful continent, with it's wonderful people will never be able to overcome their problems.

After reading Theroux's observations about Africa from the 60's and current years, I better understand the harm that the foreign aid givers are doing to African's motivation to be self sufficient!

I think I know why Theroux wrote such a whining book about his trip. I have enjoyed thoroughly his other travel books, Iron Rooster, Patagonian Express, etc, but this one...! His constant assertion that aid workers, missionaries, volunteer educators are doing more harm than good gets old quickly, whether one agrees or not. Strange, as he had been one himself in Malawi in the '60s. Repeatedly, he tells us that he is seeing things that tourists (bad word) flying into the airport never see. In Mbenga, the volunteer aid workers had the best rooms! He heard a couple say the word "Paul," and he thought Oh No, he was recognized as a famous writer, and was miffed to find that they were speaking of another writer, the lesser Paul who wrote part of the New Testament. There are too many generalized statements: "Every structure in Africa was in a state of deterioration." (p. 225) Again and again we read of his encounters with delicious looking young prostitutes and of their pleading with him for business, but his virtue remains intact. And at least twenty times along the way we read of his return to writing his "erotic novella." Straining all this out, his travels are both courageous and interesting, and I think I know why he was so negative in his writing. His last week in Africa, his beloved bag with artifacts and passport and money and radio is stolen, and worse, he gets a severe case of the diarretic squirts. The latter stays with him for months after his return home, all during the writing of the book. Had these two unfortunate events not happened the very last days of his great journey, I think we would have been able to read a more pleasant, and I suspect more realistic, account of his travels.

Consider what it is like to live with an exceptionally well-developed appreciation of your own flimsy mortality and insignificant standing in this strange and dangerous place we call the universe. Throw in a morbid and febrile imagination prone to generating 'what is the worst that can happen' scenarios, as well as a horror and fear of insects and parasites of all kinds, and you will not be surprised to learn that I prefer to do most of my travelling by book from the comfort of my favourite armchair, to the strains of my favourite ECM cds, within sight of a purring cat, or perhaps a blizzard or sunset out my front window. The authors I most like to travel with in books are Paul Bowles, Redmond O'Hanlon and Paul Theroux.

Prior to 'Dark Star Safari', I had read 'The Happy Isles of Oceania', 'Riding the Iron Rooster', and 'The Pillars of Hercules', all of which I enjoyed immensely. There is so much in a Theroux travel book. As you travel through an area with the author you get levels of fascinating history, sometimes through the eyes of famous prior travellers, such as, in this book, Flaubert and Rimbaud -so you come away learning much about them that you didn't know, plus getting the benefit of the historical comparison in settings. And things certainly have changed a lot in Africa from colonial times to now.

Theroux's comments about other travellers are always entertaining and frequently edifying, p.35,
'Wealthy people too lazy to read love cruises for the anecdotal history and archeological chats, which they use to one-up their listeners in boasting bouts after they go home. The Nile cruise passenger is someone in the process of becoming a licensed bore.'

I love the picky little details he will give at times about people who get on his nerves. These people would bother me too. Take these two encountered on a bus from Nelpruit, South Africa, to Maputo, Mozambique, p. 318,
'Two Indian men in skullcaps hogged the four seats in the front row of the top level. The men had pulled off their shoes and sat cross-legged, and the pong of their cheesy feet filled the upper deck.'

There is such variety is this book. Variety in mode of travel, from river cruise to dugout boat, from chicken bus to air-conditioned coach showing movies, from sheep truck to luxury train. Theroux only had to take a plane once on his entire journey, and that was because there was absolutely no other way of getting out of Sudan and continuing on his way. Some of Theroux's modes of travel go beyond risky to being frankly dangerous.

This is a grim book in parts, but then Africa is a grim continent. We only have to consult the headlines, which Theroux satirizes throughout the book, headlines like -'Hundreds Drown in Ferry Disaster', 'Hundreds Die As Soldiers Riot', and that favourite signoff of grim faced cable news reporters, 'And These Are the Lucky Ones.' Today, as I write this review, the headline is 'Nine Die In Luxury Bus Crash In Egypt'. There are long-term crises, imminent crises threatening to boil over, and immediate crises calling for emergency aid. Africa doesn't seem to be working, and reading this book you get an idea of why.

Theroux, with his lifetime of exotic travel experience, his top drawer literary connections, his political connections, his scholar's knowledge of history, geography and biology, and his overall drive, smarts, and lust for life, has offered up a special treat in 'Dark Star Safari', the sort of miraculous concoction I doubt that anyone else is capable of. What other book allows you to spend time with Naguib Mahfouz and Nadime Gordimer, feed hyenas at night on the outskirts of Harar, get shot at on a lawless road in Northern Kenya, visit spectacular Egyptian ruins with platoons of other tourists or alone far off in the deadly desert, debate with obnoxious evangelists (Africa is thick with them and Theroux can talk rings around them), reminisce with the Prime Minister of Uganda, take a cruise across Lake Victoria, fraternize with a myriad of wonderful, exotic wildlife, and travel the length of beautiful, dangerous Africa, top to bottom, the hard way, all the while meeting innumerable interesting characters, and hearing their stories, under impromptu, usually uncomfortable circumstances? Highly recommended.

mon, dat Paul Theroux--he like de old friend commin to your door after longtime and you be wonderin "which one showed up, mon--de Jekyll or de Hyde?" de Jekyll, oh my stars, mon, he be de followin: bitter, cantankerous, unforgivin, ruthless in he shrewd assessments, mon, of de characters of de characters (all over de world, not just de Africa) he meets and not so much interviews but interrogates. nothin escape dis Jekyll's scrutiny. no wonder he such long long friends wich de nasty but brilliant V.S. Naipaul--annodder writer you need read, methinks.

however, mon, de Mr. Hyde in de Mr. Paul, he be a poet of de first water, mon--de flights of he prose soar de stratosphere: descriptions of de sunsets, de trenchant perceptions about world aid to Africa, his sensa humour, mon--i like to smoke one blunt wich dis guy, mon.

but he a dangerous guide; you have he cadences in your pumpkin-noggin for de LONG time. like de words of dat ticklish-pricklish friend i tell you about.

you mun go read de Theroux, mon. read anyting by he. but dis be one de best of a very heavy canon.

peace, mon.

I read every word of this book. Theroux's writing skill is incredible. Half the reason I enjoyed this book was just marveling at how he can write. Although not a pleasant, feel good novel, it is a compelling portrait of life. It also brought back memories of my visits to Honolulu.

I've visited Hawaii a dozen times in the past few years, and it took me a while to understand the language of the locals, their perceptions on life, and their sense of humor. This book captures a side of Hawaii that people don't get to see intimately unless they've been there long enough: it's a place where some people just "end up". Paul Theroux relates this side of the island life to us through a mainland howlie who ends up in Honolulu somehow and lands a gig as a hotel manager. This book explores the shadier side of the island in a humorous (albeit crude) fashion. I thoroughly enjoyed this book because of the familiar voices that speak within it (not to mention his wicked sense of humor)! Not for those easily offended.

This story seems to be set in somewhat a modern Hawaii setting. Actually it is kind of like a whole bunch a stories; which is strung all together by the main character (the hotel manager). Since the author is haole, it is appropriate that his character is the under achieving hotel manager. The whole time I read it I just pictured the old Blaisdel Hotel on Fort Street. Some of the local characters seemed a little shallow, but if you can imagine Honolulu in the late sixties you might like this book.

I was going to give this novel four stars but, after reading the bad reviews and feeling how badly they've missed what makes this a great Theroux novel, I'm going to go ahead and give it five stars.
(My memories of other Theroux works is my sole motivation for taking a star off anyway).

Yes, there isn't a clearly-defined plot in HOTEL HONOLULU but the transient lives and lifestyles of the people who end up on that "rock in the middle of water" form a story that feels like a single entity. The characters are bold and vivid. Nothing whitewashed here: old white men rant about the Hawaiians and Asian women and vice versa.

Another wonderful quality about Theroux's writing is that he goes to remote and exotic locations and brings back a reality we've never seen, whether it's the South Sea islands or the dirt roads of Mongolia or the frozen train stations of Siberia...or America's paradise, Hawaii.

Bravo, Paul!

Imagine a world populated by old, smug, white men and poor, young women with great bodies and rape fantasies. Imagine a world where these young women all find the old men irresistibly attractive. Imagine many variations of the same story crudely retold in a succession of tedious chapters all with pitiful *surprise* endings. Add to this the odd chapter of author self pity. That's it.

I didn't even pass this book on to Oxfam - I binned it to save others the misery!

I enjoy the writing of Paul Theroux. This book is a train book about crossing China in the 80's. It gives a glimpse into life in China post mao.
If you enjoy Paul Theroux's writing this want disappoint.

Armchair travelers and actual travelers will positively become immersed in the lives and countries of fellow travelers and foreigners as Paul Theroux journeys accross Europe. Scents, sights, sounds and a dead-on ability to skewer irritating passengers and crew, off-train traits and culture give much zing to the chugging train trip. Another Theroux treat.

From curmudgeon to comedian, Paul Theroux plays many roles. So too does China, and this is why they make such a good match. Certainly, this book drags in places, but to that end it only mirrors actual travel. It isn't just about the destinations, but the time spent between the destinations, or in this case the time the author spends riding China's trains. Those looking for an informative history of the Great Wall or an amusing anecdote concerning the Terracotta Warriors will have to look elsewhere. Theroux shuns tourist sites almost as much as he shuns foreign tourists. When he does encounter a famous place, he often gives it a one-line assessment. He sums up Beijing's abundant cultural offerings, for example, by saying that everything was "very big and very impressive."

There is no doubt that Theroux can be caustic, but his cold appraisals should ring true for anyone who has traveled in China, at least to some degree. The problem with many China books is that they are often penned by people who are smitten by the Middle Kingdom and therefore don't wish to offend. But Paul Theroux doesn't care who he offends. In any of his books. Period. Simply put, he calls it as he sees it. Despite his penchant for snobbery, one thing that Theroux is exceptionally good at is getting in on the ground level and talking to people. This makes for many of the volume's brighter moments, like when he asks to see a commune and a group of Cantonese laugh so hard they almost fall over.

RIDING THE IRON ROOSTER is a thorough inspection (pun intended) of China during the days it was emerging from the long shadow if Maoism, but before it had begun rocketing toward the realm of capitalism. As mentioned, it can be frustrating, but no more frustrating than China itself. And like China, it's worth it for those gripping moments and laugh-out-loud encounters. I have to hand it to Mr. Theroux. He traveled around China for an entire year, a trip so extensive that he visited several places twice. To my way of thinking, he deserves four stars just for that.

Troy Parfitt, author

I read this book over a week-long period, almost 20 years after he rode the Iron Rooster through China. The many commentaries of country life, the weird customs of the people and the constant yearning to shoot birds for food made me wonder if China today is still like it was 20 years ago. I certainly hope it is not, but Theroux's style and detailed observations of miniscule events make this a very interesting, graphic read. I had the sense of where I was in the country, from the barren desert to the freezing mountains and every track inbetween. I didn't want to get off the train.

This was my first Theroux travelogue. I will certainly read many more.

For many travel writers, the point is more in the journey than the destination. That is especially true with Paul Theroux here. Whether it is the rubble of the Great Wall, the desolate wastes of Inner Mongolia, or the awe-inspiring vistas of Tibet, Theroux uses the various places of China he encounters by rail as a backdrop for what interests him most, the people.

Published in 1988, as China emerged from the darkness of the Cultural Revolution and just before the Tiananmen crackdown of 1989, "Riding The Iron Rooster" captures the world's most populous nation catching a wave of democratic sentiment, embracing materialism and such symbols of Western decadence as Jan and Dean. Whether government handler or fellow rail passenger, most everyone Theroux meets has regrets about the country's hardline past and doesn't mince words expressing it, in the process challenging his (and our) expectations of encountering a continent of doctrinaire Maoists.

"We can always fool a foreigner" is a Chinese proverb Theroux quotes right off the bat, and he takes it as his job proving otherwise. Better equipped than most Westerners, he has not only been to China before but speaks the language, enough so he can distinguish genuine laughs from politeness or insecure warning, while asking questions that would have gotten him in trouble ten years ago but now evoke amusement and curiosity.

The result is a highly subjective, idiosyncratic blast, of a self-admittedly rude foreigner pushing boundaries in an attempt to uncover deeper truths from a populace unaccustomed to giving them. His admiration of the Chinese is not without frustration. "I hated sight-seeing in China," he writes. "I felt the Chinese hid behind their rebuilt ruins so that no one could look closely at their lives."

Score this one China 1, Theroux 0, but he does put up a noble fight, and provides you with an entertaining glimpse at a country that engages your deeper interest, and admiration for an author always willing to go the extra mile, even in a cold and filthy railcar.

The book does lack some sense of geography; even consulting the map on the flyleaf doesn't help as Theroux expands and contracts the reader's sense of time and space. He may dismiss the terra-cotta soldiers' ranks of Xi'an with a couple of paragraphs, while spending pages on the quality and universality of public spitting. But you wind up with a journey that tells you as much about the complexity of Theroux, a dyspeptic but very talented observer in the tradition of Evelyn Waugh, as it does about the great land he visits here.

"Travel is frequently a matter of seizing a moment," he writes. "It is personal. Even if I were traveling with you, your trip would not be mine." Here, you sort of are traveling with him, and the result is a literary journey as intoxicating as it is educational.

Please don't waste your time with this book. Theroux proves to be narrow minded, constantly negative, and regularly insensitive or incorrect in his portrayal of each region's history (his summery of modern Greece in particular was just painful). Which is a shame because he traveled to many very interesting places, he just seems to have been mostly interested in complaining about the pan handelers that bothered him in each of them. The start really says it all, when he decries the horrors of middle-class beach tourism (very original) and then proceeds to travel up the Costa del Sol in Spain, one of the heaviest beach resort areas in the world. I'm sure you'll be shocked to hear that he didn't like it, lol. Further, everything is shaded by a disdainful and superior attitude towards everyone he met...except fellow writers of course who were always "well respected". Maybe this overawes and "educates" some people, but as an intellectual myself who has traveled to some of these places also it just seems like the kind of elitist crap that gives the educated a bad name. Maybe his other books are good, he can certainly write, but I'll never read them after this one.

As expected, another wonderful travel book from a master, this time spiced with some biting observations of the moneyed tourist class.

I have read five of Paul Theroux's travel books: The Great Railway Bazaar, The Kingdom by the Sea, The Old Patagonian Express, Travel Fiend and now The Pillars of Hercules. I can say without a doubt, that this is my favorite travelogue of his. The book is concise and knowledgable and shows erudition lacking in most travelogues.

It is a total learning experience. I have looked up more words in this book than in most books I read. And I really appreciate that. He doesn't write books for people who are looking to read about the surface of a culture, or who just want the interesting bits revealed to them. He writes books for people that are truly interested and will take the time to learn all that he supplies the reader.

And I think this is his crowning achievement!

Well, I just enjoy listening to (reading) what this guy talks (writes) about in his travels. An example (just one of many, many) is about the Mafia Monks. Seriously! Their nefarious activities "never prevented their hearing confessions, saying masses, or preaching at funerals - in one case, the monk in question saying a funeral high mass and preaching piously over the body of a man he had ordered killed." And I like the way he talks to ordinary people on the street and gets their point of view. Yes, it's a topsy-turvy world, but it sure beats the artificial world of fiction. I just visited Las Vegas. People wasting their lives chasing the jackpot, the fantasy world. Well, to each his own. But Paul Theroux tells it like it is - nutty, maybe, but that's the reality.

Paul Theroux's travel books are a unique delight, and "Pillars of Hercules" is one of his best. In it, he travels from Gibraltar to Tangier, the long way, around the Med Sea. It's compelling reading: The places he visits and the people he meets; his 'take' on things. I had never even considered wanting to travel to Croatia or Albania or Syria or Tunisia, but now I'd like to go. But it's PT's take on places I've been to - Spain, France, Italy - that were most enjoyable, for he usually travels to out of the way places. I was pleased that he also noticed how much dog crap is on the sidewalks in France. His conversations with famed writers Naguib Mahfouz (after being stabbed by a fanatical Muslim)in Cairo and with Paul Bowles in Tangier are two of the books best parts. I highly recommend this book.

I enjoyed this book for its wonderful sensuosity, but found the author's superior and condescending tone frustrating. I found myself wondering why on Earth he took the trip if he wasn't going to at least try to appreciate the people and cultures he visited? Still, he took me on a journey I'll probably make myself and, while Theroux may not have relished the adventure, I did.

... and this book is indeed an old friend, for it is the work that introduced me - and many others - to Paul Theroux. It was this book that introduced me to Theroux's charming crankiness, his wickedly astute ability to size up a human interaction and make the most of it - almost like a young boy who starts to craft a "whopper" - but most of all, his uncanny talent for observing a scene for nary a moment and offering up visualization that stays in the mind's eye for ages.

Here is Theroux's oft-quoted take on pulling into one of Europe's crown jewels: "Venice, like a drawing room in a gas station, is approached through a vast apron of infertile industrial flatlands, criss-crossed with black sewer troughs and stinking of oil, the gigantic sinks and stoves of refineries and factories, all intimidating the delicate dwarfed city beyond."

But there is more, just as artful, sometimes better:

"...modernization stopped in Turkey with the death of Ataturk, at five minutes past nine on November 10, 1938. As if to demonstrate this, the room in which he died is as he left it, and all the clocks in the palace show the time as 9:05. This seemed to explain why the Turks typically dress the way people did in 1938, in hairy brown sweaters and argyle socks, in baggy pinstriped pants and blue serge suits with padded shoulders, flapping winglike lapels and a three-pointed hanky in the breast pocket. Their hair is wavy with brilliantine and their mustaches are waxed..."

Or this: "Laos, a river bank, had been overrun and ransacked; it was one of America's expensive practical jokes, a motiveless place where nothing was made, everything imported; a kingdom with baffling pretensions to Frenchness... the more I thought of it, the more it seemed like a lower form of life, like the cross-eyed planarian or squashy amoeba, the sort of creature that can't even die when it is cut to ribbons."

Or: "The mountains had begun to rise, acquiring the shape of ampitheaters with a prospect of the China Sea; eerie and bare and blue, their summits smothered in mist, they trailed smoke from slash-and-burn fires... Now it was sunny and warm: the Vietnamese climbed up to the roofs of the coaches and sat with their legs hanging past the eaves. We were close enough to the beach to hear the pounding surf, and ahead in the curving inlets that doubled up the train, fishing smacks and canoes rode the frothy breakers to the shore, where men in parasol hats spun circular webbed nets over the crayfish."

"Railway Bazaar" has been derided by some for offering only a fleeting glimpse of various cultures from a train window and a quick layover; truth be told, that is what foreign travel consists of even for the most intrepid traveler who is not an anthropologist or social scientist. Theroux does a perfectly splendid job painting a portrait of a war-ravaged Vietnam where GIs and the locals have come to somewhat cynical terms with the denouement, and his vivid and disquieting depiction of the infusion of sexual violence into mainstream entertainment (theater and even comic books) in Japan is among the best I have read about this dark underside of that culture.

And then there are the characters of his passing parade, the bit real-life players that Theroux shapes into larger-than-life caricatures. They are at turns annoying, stealthy, invasive, pedantic, morose and beatific, and Theroux breathes life into them - each a literary joy in his or her own way.

Theroux has a wonderful knack for taking the last paragraph of his creations (many, at least) and crystallizing the mood of that work within a final sentence or two (think "Saint Jack" and "My Secret History"). He does that in "Railway Bazaar" and when the literary train pulls into the station, you want to step off quickly, grab a refreshment, then reboard for another ride.

Old Friends like this do need revisiting every so often.

I've read a bunch of his travel books now. I always find them fun to read. This one, however, I found a little more difficult than the others. To me often it was like a crazy quilt of scenes and I felt overwhelmed at times. I enjoyed learning about the Sikhs and northern India in general. But what do I know about the Biharis vs. the Bengalis? I formed pictures, but felt I didn't know what it was all about. Though after reading what he writes about India, I never want to go there. But then I found it so interesting to read about how the people of Japan are so entertained by violent sex with blood and murder. That young girl with the comic book depicting all that violence! Why is that so entertaining to them? Well, Americans like that stuff too. But I'd rather read about what it is really like than about some phony everyone is so loving to everyone else sort of thing. And I will never forget the one-legged man, hopping ahead so fast that Paul couldn't catch up with him. All in all, I am immensely grateful to Paul Theroux for his showing me all these things around the world while I am safely ensconced in my comforable easy chair at home.

Note: I made some immature Mormon angry because of my negative reviews of books that attempted to prove the Book of Mormon, and that person has been slamming my reviews almost as fast as they are posted.

So, your "helpful" votes are appreciated. Thanks, and note that a short review is not necessarily a bad review if it leads you to a great book.

If you always dreamed of traveling, then do it the easy way by reading one of Paul Theroux's accounts of his travels. They are funny and insightful and grand adventures. Check out these lines:

"The sad engineer would never go back to England; he would become one of these elderly expatriates who hide out in remote countries, with odd sympathies, a weakness for the local religion, an unreasonable anger, and the kind of total recall that drives curious strangers away."

Speaking of young foreign travelers, Theroux says:

"Occasionally, I saw an amorous pair leave their compartment hand in hand to go copulate in the toilet.
Most were on their way to India and Nepal, because
`the wildest dreams of Kew are the facts of Khatmandhu
And the crimes of Clapham chaste in Martaban.'
But the majority of them, going for the first time, had that look of frozen apprehension that is the mask of the face of an excapee."

Theroux has a great quote in the beginning of the first chapter--"The journey is the goal."

It hardly needs repeating that Paul Theroux is an exceptionally gifted writer. Moreover, this is a very skilfully written story, full of original and acute perceptions put across with wit and point. Theroux recounts a series of train journeys, interspersed with boat trips or aeroplane links where the rail option is not available, as for instance when making a sea crossing or in railless Afghanistan. In the course of this journey he has a number of lecturing engagements, presumably arranged in advance, for which I assume (although he does not say so) that he received a fee. I assume also that what took him away from his home and family for so many long months was not just the enjoyment of rail travel that he owns up to, but financial recompense for the book that he intended to publish as a record of his trip.

Earning an honest living by writing, and by travel writing in particular, is a worthy and honourable pursuit. However when the people represented in the story are real people, and the incidents are true occurrences, and the statements recorded are what people really said, there are to my way of thinking certain standards of taste and propriety that should be carefully adhered to. Personal records of travel and encounters along the way are presented impeccably in, say, Germaine Greer's `Daddy We Hardly Knew You' or in Peter Hessler's River Town and Oracle Bones. In these narratives the authors have reasons for being where they are and for meeting who they meet. These are accounts of research, investigation and exploration from which the books are a spin-off. They have not just taken a trip with a view to parading whoever they might happen to meet before the public at large, which is really what Theroux is doing here. Was the permission of Mr Duffill or Mr Molesworth sought before their statements and actions were made public? I doubt it somehow, but my idea of propriety doesn't even necessarily require that. The parties reported sympathetically by Dr Greer obviously knew what she was doing, but the personae she disliked would not have been consulted about what she intended to say about that them, and that is fine by me. What I am not happy about is going out on a fishing trip and subsequently dangling the fish on a line to be gawped at or derided. Some instances are worse than others. It is not particularly offensive to pillory the downmarket press of any country, such as the Indian weekly `Blitz' which informed him regarding some rowdy individual that `He was high and headstrong...Hurled abuse at some and then fisted a guest', in which the last verb is not used in a more recent sense but means `punched'. I also can't deny that I was amused (rather guiltily) at the clever representation of his Japanese host's offer to show him the local Tiergarten `You want to see tzu?' `What kind of tzu?' `Wid enemas'. Very smart, very clever, but coming from someone who spoke no Japanese more than a little patronising and de haut en bas.

I think it is perhaps the chapter on Japan that brings out in particular the slight sense of distaste I feel for this book. Theroux recounts at some length and with some particularity erotic shows and publications patronised by placid-seeming middle-class Japanese. I confess I find the shows as he describes them somewhat disgusting, but in a rather detached way. What revolts me more acutely is the spectacle of the audiences themselves, and that brings to the fore in my mind the nature of Theroux's own narration. What exactly is he doing there in the first place? He is another audience on the next tier. Does he have some mission to tell the world about all this? Is he engaged in academic research? None of that, and he does at least show awareness of the issue, admitting that he is a bit of a drone amusing himself idly and in the process making rather free with other people's privacy for the entertainment of a paying public.

All that said, the book still has plenty to recommend it. I felt that the later chapters are better than the earlier, which have too much sense about them of `oh look at these people doing these things' and `this guy said this three-quarter's of a page worth to me'. There was a sharp improvement starting with the chapter on Singapore, where Theroux's trenchant comments seem to me to be not only valid in themselves but also to satisfy one of my own requirements from a book of this kind by offering analysis and generalisation rather than just random detail. Also, the book was written in the early 1970's, and so is a reminder of an epoch. This was pre-junta Burmah, for instance. It was the time of the cold war. South Africa was still under apartheid although the availability of the industrial capacity of the Japanese obtained for them the status of `white' from Mr Botha or whoever was in charge in South Africa at the time in question. Above all, it was the time of the war in Vietnam, and the vignettes of that ravaged nation as recounted by so talented and independent a storyteller made a vivid impression on one reader at least.

At one point Theroux comments that travel narratives turn into autobiography. The books I have instanced by Greer and Hessler are certainly autobiography and rightly so. I only wish this book had practised what it preaches. Theroux gives away comparatively little about himself apart from his participation in a few dialogues, the purpose of which is largely to pillory his interlocutors, and I particularly miss precisely this sense of personal development which he himself says one should expect.

There is next to nothing for railway geeks, but if I remember one thing above all from the book, it is the tantalising semi-description of the viaduct at Gokteik in Burmah.

Terrific in every way, as all of Theroux's travel books are! Not a word too many, and not an insight overlooked in this adventure through the Americas. Wonderful, beautiful, and a treasured book in my library.

One of Theroux's best train trips. You can really feel the shifting landscapes as he moves through the latitudes...

A remark that one reads often about Paul Theroux is that he is grouchy, critical of the people he meets, and generally unpleasant. Some readers seem to suggest that this makes him a worse traveller, not being pure-of-heart or sufficiently open-minded. On the other hand, some others suggest he is worth reading as a travel writer precisely because he's not afraid to tell-it-like-it-is. I think it is likely that both of these ideas are wrong.

When Paul Theroux writes a travel book, he is not a journalist writing simply to produce a faithful depicition of the places he visits. He is not a social crusader writing in order educate the reader about the lives of the poor or to stimulate the reader to see the richness of life outside of North American. He certainly not an egotist like Thomas Friedman who writes in order to put himself in a positive light. He is simply an intelligent man who has enough humility to try to write down what he has experienced without drawing too many clumsy conclusions or false symmetries. When he writes that he didn't like a certain person sleeping in his train compartment, he doesn't expect the reader to sympathize with either him or the unpleasant companion. I don't think he means to argue that his dislike has any special significance beyond the fact that it was part of the travel story that he is telling. I like the fact that when Theroux narrates an encounter with someone in his travels he doesn't smooth out the details to make the encounter unambiguously positive or negative. For example, when he describes meeting Jorge Borges, the Argentine writer, he clearly admires Borges' memory and sensitivity and yet he doesn't avoid commenting on Borges' stuttering and his clowning smile. And yet again I don't think Theroux's remarks are meant to be cynical or knowing. When he tells-it-like-it-is he is not trying to steer an intellectual or moral high road and he is not valiantly trying to see past illusions. I believe that when he writes down a conversation or encounter he intends only to include his side as one of the characters in his story.

Theroux has the patience to travel by train across a hemisphere and, thankfully for this reader, he has the patience to delay the moment when the mind can no longer calmly observe and rashly commits itself to streamlined answers and silly pet theories about what one sees and what it 'really' means. His books are, to me, humble because in them he shows us moments when he feels superior and they are wise because he doesn't try to step outside of his story to engage in falsely-wise pronoucements.

It doesn't matter whether Paul Therous is a 'good' traveller or not. Few travellers have the writing ability to produce any sort of record of their travels anyway, whatever their nature. The reason one ought to read Paul Theroux is be reminded of what the world and oneself can look like through the eyes of an ardent traveller who just happens to love books a bit more than he loves people.

In 1979, Paul Theroux departed from his childhood home in Medford, Massachusetts, and began his train journey from the East Coast of the United States to Patagonia, on the southern tip of Argentina. A seasoned traveler, fluent in Spanish, Theroux brings to life his trip through the northern and southern hemispheres, traveling without a schedule and observing his fellow passengers on the train and people at stops along the way.

In Texas he is astonished at the contrasts between Laredo on the Texas side of the Rio Grande and Nuevo Laredo across the border in Mexico, commenting on society and governments. Traveling through Mexico and Guatemala, he observes the poverty of the Indians and their lack of opportunities. In El Salvador he attends a soccer game and gets caught up in the melee and riots which follow it. In Costa Rica, the cleanest country he has visited, he finds himself stuck on the train with Mr. Thornberry, a New Hampshire tourist so boring that Theroux cannot wait to escape him--only to have Mr. Thornberry "save his life" by offering him a place to stay upon his arrival in Limon. In Panama he meets the "Zonians," from the Canal Zone, and in Cali, Colombia, he meets a married "priest" who cannot tell his devout mother in Belfast that he has "left" the church to marry and have children.

Throughout his trip, Theroux reads classics, particularly enjoying Boswell's Life of Dr. Johnson and Edgar Allen Poe's The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym, both of which provide ironic reference points for his own journey. For literature lovers, the most fascinating section occurs in Buenos Aires, where Theroux spends many days visiting blind writer Jorge Luis Borges, who persuades Theroux to read to him. Ironically, one of Borges's favorite novels is The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym. As Theroux takes notes on his meetings with Borges, he becomes Borges's Boswell.

More an observer than a participant, Theroux has an unfortunate air of superiority about what he sees and hears. Sparing little sympathy for American and German tourists, he rarely gets excited about his surroundings, expressing genuine emotion only when he talks with three boys, ages ten to twelve, who live in a doorway and scavenge for food because their rural families have abandoned them. Theroux's self-congratulatory attitude gets a bit wearisome, but the picture of Central and South America, thirty years ago, and the section with Borges are unparalleled. With beautiful, carefully observed prose and a great ear for dialogue, Theroux's Patagonia Express is a landmark travel memoir. n Mary Whipple

Note: I made some immature Mormon angry because of my negative reviews of books that attempted to prove the Book of Mormon, and that person has been slamming my reviews almost as fast as they are posted.

So, your "helpful" votes are appreciated. Thanks, and note that a short review is not necessarily a bad review if it leads you to a great book.

From Boston to Patagonia by train. What an adventure. As I wrote in my review of the "Great Railway Bazaar," treat yourself to traveling the easy way and read one of Paul Theroux's books.

Peter Mathiessen described the "Old Patagonian Express" perfectly: "Sharp-eyed, honest, and exceptionally well-written...an implacable landscape, conveyed through a series of marvelous encounters."

Although at his worst Theroux can be glib and spooky (as he is in the title piece of this collection), at his best he writes with a melancholy tenderness about his children; about the euphoric escapes from England that can lead to the long loneliness of travel; about the city of London in all its fog and drizzle and smoky winter dusks.

In "Lady Max" the most enigmatic character is a vengeful Lady Bountiful who advances Theroux's literary prospects by mentioning his name to powerful friends and taking him for instructive strolls along the Thames. They walk along the Embankment in the damp air, "next to the whitish, depthless water," while Lady Max points out the church where William Blake got married.

They also visit the Tate and pass a set of "big flat Motherwells, all black shapes like moth-eaten shadows", a description almost as thrilling as Theroux's evocation of Anthony Burgess writing a phrase of music and the way he "took out his fountain pen and drew on a napkin a stave of parallel lines, then rapidly, like hanging fruit on these lines, he inscribed a series of notes."

Women fall into two types (or stereotypes) in My Other Life: black-haired and petitely exquisite on the one hand; and on the other, fair-haired, stocky, and hard to impress.

But men are invariably evoked with a brutal eye: Ian Musprat, the struggling young author of The Dogflud Chronicles, has "flecks of vol-au-vent pastry on his tie and fingers"; his eyes are bloodshot; the knot on his tie "yanked small". And when Theroux flies to England to have dinner with the Queen, he writes a savage but very funny cameo of a "bossy, buttocky" flight attendant who is "male, wet-eyed, twitching to be noticed." Later, at the royal dinner, Prince Philip is portrayed as a cold man, clearly embittered by a long married life of privileged uselessness, a man exacting a lackey's revenge with his "mirthless, barking laugh."

An often brilliant book about writers and the writing life, My Other Life is both merciless and entertaining.

But only in a post-structuralist sort of way. The self-consciousness makes this otherwise finely-written book uneven; it's a collection of memoir essays collected in a pastiche, actually, Theroux's version of *The Benny Poda Years* (or vice-versa). And after a while, one grows a little tired of the "fiction" pose in BOTH narrators'lives--after all, autobiography itself has a lengthy and healthy legacy of inspiring the Reader's suspension of disbelief.

Over the past 30 years, I have had the pleasure of reading (and in some cases, re-reading with relish) eleven of Paul Theroux's works. "My Other Life" represents his crowning achievement.

Although the preface to "My Other Life" states that "the man is fiction, but the mask is real," Mr. Theroux has experienced enough vicissitudes in life (some painful, as we all do) not to have some real life lessons drip onto the page, even if attributed to a fictional "Paul" or another character entirely. This "novel", if it can be called that, takes the form of a chronological mirror image of the author's real travels and family life, but with the second half decidedly more introspective (mask or no mask), so much so that the reader begins to view the real Paul Theroux with a sense of newfound respect for having come to terms with the rougher side of his life, having eventually made sense of it, and having moved on. Put another way, there is less cantankerousness and more humanity in "My Other Life" than in earlier works.

Yet "My Other Life" never bogs down in navel-gazing; it is simply too entertaining for that. The reader is served up a triple mix of the author's always-exquisite writing style, trademark drollness and some bittersweet vignettes with occasional (self-) analysis to ponder.

Aside from the question of "Who is Paul?", "My Other Life" offers some delicious tales to be savored in their own right: a mysterious woman living a life of seclusion on the English coastline (with a terrific twist ending); the now-famous (in Britain, infamous) episode of a very commanding and somewhat supercilious Queen and suffering Prince Philip at a dinner party; and the author's return to his hometown of Medford, only to end up hanging out with an academically-challenged clique of low-lifers years removed from Theroux who have no idea who he is and who fracture the King's English in a vernacular the author conjures beautifully.

"My Other Life" demonstrates more than any other of Theroux's works why he is one of America's most gifted writers of the last century. 5+ - Highly Recommended.

This book is a strange mixture of autobiography and fiction; an "imaginary memoir" as the author explains in the book's preface: "This is the story of a life I could have lived had things been different". Each chapter is a self-contained short story (or short memoir if you like), and it's often tantalizing to imagine what is real, what is an exaggerated version of the truth and what is pure fantasy. It is probable, for instance, that Theroux met the Queen, but less likely that he found himself briefly alone with her and experienced a burning and reckless desire to touch her, indeed to burst into tears and cry on her shoulder. These sorts of fantasies make My Other Life an often humourous read but there are flashes of whimsy, nostalgia and regret as well.
Some of the chapters are short and epigrammatic; the longer chapters are more satisfying, particularly "The Queen's Touch" (mentioned above), "Poetry Lessons" and "Lady Max". They all feature the typical Theroux trademarks: ironic detachment verging on superciliousness, fluid writing style with clever use of dialogue, and sly humour. He's a page-turner as well: the plots are subtle but compelling, you're drawn into the stories, wanting to know what is going to happen next, yet the tales are not plot-driven and so there is plenty of time for reflection.
In "Poetry Lessons", Theroux recounts a tale that combines poetry with a small intrigue involving a rich, untalented benefactor to whom the narrator is drawn to for his wealth and power yet repelled by his (and his wife's) uncritical vulgarity. The benefactor wants Theroux to teach him how to write better poetry, but it soon becomes obvious that not only does this benefactor lack talent, he also lacks any literary intelligence or worldliness (he asks "which war?" when Theroux mentions the War Poets). Theroux takes artful delight in pointing out to the reader this stooge's solecisms and paucity of literary knowledge.
"Lady Max", again, satirizes the rich and powerful: Theroux feels contempt for the eponymous and vaguely reptilian woman but is strangely drawn into her world, without, apparently, being corrupted by it.
"The Queen's Touch" is very funny, despite its overall tone of quiet desperation. Her Majesty comes across as a rather detached but thoughtful lady, with an aura of wise serenity, while her husband is ridiculed for his intense irascibility:
"This was a man who knew how to express boredom. In order to show me how utterly uninterested he was he worked his mouth, savouring, tasted something foul, pulled a face, then made an effort of swallowing... his relentless negativity and unhelpfulness baffled me."

There is much pleasure to be derived from Theroux's prose: he is a skilful writer: succinct, ironic, with a great gift for a turn of a phrase. My Other Life combines his skill at fiction and non-fiction, and the thought that some of the described events may have actually happened provides us with a frisson of delight.

...self-indulgent...But that would be too harsh and can't go without explanation.

The book is essentially 456 pages of Theroux (fictional or autobiographical, it doesn't matter) whining...about his writing or lack of it, about his poverty and lack of success as a writer, about people he doesn't like or doesn't understand (usually those with more money or success than himself). You get the idea.

After the first hundred pages or so, I knew where the whole thing was going: this 'novel' (better defined as a collection of loosely related short stories) serves to convey an oblique account of the steady disintegration of Theroux's marriage and how he comes to grips with it and gets on with his life afterwards. He takes his time getting to the point, though, and this hurts. Meanwhile, he spends a great many words complaining about the English, directly or indirectly. Which is perhaps the book's only truly entertaining irony, as he writes in such a very British way that I hardly heard his (allegedly) 'American' voice until very late in the book. Even then, he frequently used accidental Britishisms...no American writer would write 'Cocoa Puffs' and then feel obliged to explain that it was a breakfast cereal, and no American would note that a man 'has a sport' when he means to say that he works out regularly.

Conspicously lacking amid this whine-fest are any solid recollections of his success stories (again, whether fictional or autobiographical, the result is the same). We never hear about the joy of landing a publishing contract, of having a book turned into a movie, of the satisfaction of shepherding his children toward adulthood, of his great travel experiences and sexual flings. We only hear about the bad parts. He was underpaid here; he was underappreciated there. His sexual escapades almost always end in inept frustration. This went wrong, that was miserable, this fell apart, on and on. Taken at face value, one wouldn't know from this book what a success Theroux has really been (even the fictional version).

However, it does have it's good moments. Technically, the writing is excellent, especially when he turns his attention to describing a scene in physical detail - the train ride to Moyo, and the depth of detail in Medford come readily to mind. There are a few very nice chapters, especially in the second half of the book. 'Forerunners' is charming and very clever, if heavily telegraphed, and 'George and Me' is right on. 'Medford - Next 3 Exits' almost worth the price of the book.

I'm still scratching my head over the TIME review blurb on the cover "...a seriously funny novel," as the humor in this book is "minuscule," as Paul's Uncle Hal might say.

I give it three stars, but don't recommend it.

I really enjoyed these three overlapping novellas. The writing was rich, textured. Theroux really captures the human experience which unfortunately isn't always rosey.

Theroux has written so many incredible books and yet few realize how prolific he is. Sure some didn't thrill me. But this can be added to the many that are filled with characters only he could come up with. The master travel spinster KNOWS how Americans see things in "exotic" countries. And it is through their eyes that you also get to see the startling new India.

Theroux delivers three novellas that depict an uneasy blend of East and West in contemporary India. Americans abroad who are hardly "innocents" but who are certainly clueless find themselves out of their depth in an ancient culture that chews them up and spits them out. Other than the college girl in "The Elephant God" Theroux doesn't build a lot of empathy for his characters; in much of his work he has tended to be a misanthrope. Just the same he manages to draw you into their feelings of dread when things start to go wrong, and uses this dread to drive home hard truths about culture, religion, and human nature.

I am an avid reader of Indian novels --both those that take place in India (like Rohinton Mistry's wonderful books) or The Death of Vishnu, etc. and those that take place in the US or the UK like Ms. Lamhri's The Namesake and Interpretation of Maladies and Monica Ali's Brick Lane to name a few.

Thus, I found this book quite refreshing and compelling --particularly the first two stories that concern themselves with seduction and willingness to succumb to temptation --it is, as someone said, reminiscient of some of Somerset Maughm and Graham Greene's work -- the idea of the westerner being drawn into this seemingly compliant and subservient culture with all the downside implications of this debauchery and immorality.

All three stories are wonderful reads and I loved the way Theroux very subtly provides a thread or a link from one story to another.
I highly recommend this boook!

I enjoy reading fiction that depicts modern day India. This group of three novellas is right up there with the cream of the crop. There's nothing romanticized about the India depicted here. As you read, you really get the feeling, "This is probably the way India really is." There were many times when I wondered to myself, "How does someone become such a sharp observer as Theroux is?"

I was amazed both at Theroux's command of the language, and how extremely sharp he is at bringing out the telling detail that really gives you the feel of the place and the person described. There are a lot of unsavory characters here. And yet Theroux describes them so well that I always felt their humanity and got a clear sense of why they were doing what they were doing. That put me in touch with their humanity and created a sense of sympathy, in most cases. Though there were one or two slime bags that I could never like, though, thanks to Theroux's genius, I could understand them.

I was amazed by this book. If you are interested in modern day India as well as enjoy just plain masterful writing, then you will treasure this book.

I came late to Paul Theroux. I'd been aware of his travel books (never read them) but assumed a good travel writer does not make a good fiction writer - boy, was I wrong. So, one evening, while browsing the used book store for something to read I picked up "My Secret History." I opened it and read the first paragraph and was intriqued enough to purchase it. Once I got it home I couldn't put it down. "My Secret History" is five extraodinary books seperated into six chapters, the last being the weakest. I went from loving this book to hating it-specifically the main character, for his contradictions and selfishness. Then it(or the author) would redeem itself for it's honesty. Bukowski said to be a great writer one has to expose every miserable and disgusting thing because if you don't the reader will know you're a fake. And Harry Crews also had a similar take when he said you have to put on paper the secrets that make you cringe and embarrassed. Well, Mr. Theroux exposes his racism, arrogance, mysogyny but does so honestly, like few other writers can and in doing so; he's crafted a readable and subtle piece of autobiography disguised as fiction.
The first chapter deals with the books protagonist- Andre Parente's troubled adolescence growing up in the shadow of the Catholic church and trying to be a good and responsible altar boy. Even while slowly waking up to the realization that his church isn't about religion as much as it is about conformity and guilt. After seeing his favorite priest treated shabbily and cruely Andy becomes lost and bewildered. Anyone who's grown up under the heavy hand of religion or authority will instanly relate to this young boys turmoil. Once his faith is lost and his eyes open up to the real world, Andy is left bewildered and angry.
The next chapter picks up with Andy looking for a job as a lifeguard during his summer break from college. He lands a job at a country club where he can barely hide his contempt for it's members. But he soldiers on because he's desperate for the good wages. This part of the book so expertly conveys the alienation and anger that is inherent at this age that it's really comforting to know that someone else felt the same alienation we may have felt at this age. Paul Theroux writes his own "The Catcher in the Rye" in this chapter so well that when the next chapter switches gear and tells of Andy as 21 year old teaching in Africa, its a bit jarring.
This chapter of Andy's life takes place during the 70's with England giving Malawai it's independence. Andy is headmaster at a small school in this tiny country in Africa teaching poor children. He thinks of himself as the great white savior. While at the same time he leads a secret life of a sexual deviant bedding as many Afican woman as possible. There are so many contradictions here and a growing dislike for Andy as a person that I wanted to strangle him and throw the book threw a window. But it'd be a shame if I did because this is where Mr. Theroux really shines. He writes Andy's story so convincingly that the reader takes on the mentallity of Andy in thinking that he is superior in his morals and judgements the same way Andy thinks he's superior to everyone around him in Africa. Only a pro could write something so subtle a turnaround as this. It really reminded me of Graham Greenes style of illustrating the ambiguity of the human condition.
The final chapters find Andy traveling India, living in England and coming to the realization that he's no not so perfect. I'd go into more detail but I wanna leave some mystery to this book which conveys the arrogance of man through the microcosm of one person's life. There are books just for entetainment and then there are books like "My Secret History" that leave me feeling like I learned something about myself.

Paul Theroux is best known for his bestselling nonfiction tomes about travel around the world, be that China, England, or the South Pacific. This book, however, is a thinly veiled novel about the author's dangerous secret life...a tale of two women (one his wife, one his mistress). There is some exotic setting (Africa) and some sexually charged scenes. It lays bare the writer's own flaws as a man and his release as a writer (which to him feels like "home").

What I found most interesting in the book, however, was the way in which the main character (Andy Parent, a name with a Freudian reference?) helps the reader understand and appreciate each woman for her own unique character and what she has to offer the main character. It's a story that perfectly captures why men don't leave their wives when they have an affair. The writing here is top notch as usual, but the subject matter explores a different country altogether.

Although some may find this a strange departure from Theroux's normal fare, it also demonstrates the depth of his writing chops. His skill as a writer can be applied to any genre. That he has chosen to reveal much of his own inner landscape is a special gift to his longtime fans. While Theroux's readers may favor his lifetime's work on traveling the globe, this portrait of his inner journey can be just as interesting.

I've said before on here that I am not a Paul Theroux fan even though I think he is a talented writer. Having read a few of his books I've learned he is not the author for me. While "Hotel Honolulu" was OK, this book did nothing for me.

The prequal to his acclaimed *My Other Life*, *My Secret History* is also a masterful work of narrative and characterization, imbued with grace, humor, and humanity. It demonstrates a young man's coming-of-age stuggles more astutely than any book I've read, and while it's easier to read than the later book, it's just as poignant: we often rather smugly hide behind our baggage and consider younger people frivolous because of inexperience, or somehow incapable of love. Theroux shows that they *do* feel love, of romance, friendship, respect--and these emotions form the measuring sticks by which all our subsequent experiences will be measured. Moreover, the book itself is an act of love--of writing and of living. It has made me value my own life more fully, through pages that made me relate, reflect, laugh, and read until dawn, and then, the better for it, get up and start writing, myself.

And living.

Just read the tender, blunt and beautiful first section, and I seriously doubt you'll stop.

Outstanding biographical work by Theroux, couched as fiction to allow for creative license. The book takes you through the world of Andre Parent, a writer who travels Africa and Europe, living the surface life of an upstanding individual, concealing the secret life of an energized sexually charged vagabond.

Chapter 1 (Altar Boy) is about Andre's coming of age, and outgrowing his parents expectations.

Chapter 2 (Whale Steaks) covers his oscilation between his love of a slightly older girlfriend, and his fascination with someone from his parent's generation.

Chapter 3 (African Girls) talks about his adventures in the peace corps, largely oriented around sleeping with the local girls.

Chapter 4 (Bush Baby) is the continuing story of his adventures, including some encounters with a V.S. Naipul lookalike. (Interesting as Naipul was a major influence on Theroux's career)

Chapter 5 (Leaving Siberia) has a double meaning. It is about Parent physically leaving Siberia on a travel writing trip, and an emotional exit from Siberia after learning of his wife's infidelity.

Chapter 6 (Two of Everything) is about the double life that Parent lives - one with his wife, and another with his mistress. It chronicles an identical trip through India with both women. This is an example of him becoming what he had previously abhored.

The book is well written on several levels. It vividly takes you into the peace corps, and through Africa. It also has a lot of subtly, as the character first repeats his own mistakes, and then repeats the mistakes he dislikes in others. The disappointment with his eventual success (be careful what you ask for as you might get it) on both the large and small levels are told with a straight face, adding to the believability of the character.

The book is 500 pages of a quick energizing read. Well worth the time invested.