Ghost Train to the Eastern Star: On the Tracks of the Great Railway Bazaar

From the Editors

<DIV><DIV>Half a lifetime ago, Paul Theroux virtually invented the modern travel narrative by recounting his grand tour by train through Asia. In the three decades since, the world he recorded in that book has undergone phenomenal change.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 he passed through. </DIV><DIV> </DIV><DIV>In <I>Ghost Train to the Eastern Star, </I>Theroux re-creates that earlier journey. His odyssey takes him from eastern Europe, still hung-over from communism, through tense but thriving Turkey into the Caucasus, where Georgia limps back toward feudalism while its neighbor Azerbaijan revels in oil-fueled capitalism.Theroux is firsthand witness to it all, encountering adventures only he could have: from the literary (sparring with the incisive Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk) to the dissolute (surviving a week-long bender on the Trans-Siberian Railroad).Wherever he goes, his omnivorous curiosity and unerring eye for detail never fail to inspire, enlighten, inform, and entertain. </DIV><P></P></DIV>
Product Description

Customer Response

Too old to Rock n Roll, Too Young to Die
Poor Mr. Theroux. After all these years, he still hasn't found himself. I read all his travel books when I was in my expatriate stage and found them a good read. You cannot deny his eye for detail and his determination to chronicle mundane events and transform them into something larger than life but I'm surprised the author hasn't just hung himself by now. He makes fun of Christian missionaries in Asia, tells a Russian that on the Trans-Siberian express that he likes Obama (insinuating his favoritism towards socialism) yet painfully describes the demoralization that Socialism has brought to the countries he travels through. In my youth, I thought he was simply a curmudgeon with an eye for detail and a wicked sense of sarcasm and humor but after finishing this book, I have come to the conclusion that he is a lost soul and a hypocrite, subtly praising the exoticness of faraway lands stuck in third world time yet living the good life in a successful, Christian country. Still, his prose is invigorating and some of his personal insights into the life of a writer are noteworthy but he's certainly no Mark Twain. At least he's consistent in his inconsistency.

Theroux's Authority and Experience Make Ghost Train a Strong Account
In Theroux's new book, Ghost Train to the Eastern Star, he retraces a route he took 33 years ago, when he was 33 years old. Part of that trip goes through India. And so Theroux, now 67, is in a good position to judge the changes in India. He is mostly unimpressed. "We drove through the streets of Mumbai, past the slums, the sidewalk sleepers, the lame and the halt. Was the miracle, I wonder, just an illusion?"

Theroux writes about the constant presence of the poor. "Unlike the poor in Europe or America or even China, the poor in India are a constant presence. Where else do people put up with plastic huts on the sidewalk of a main road - not one or two, but an entire subdivision of humpies and pup tents? They inhabit train stations, sleep in doorways, crouch under bridges and railway trestles."

Review by a writer for Agora Financial, publisher of economic and financial analysis including Financial Reckoning Day Fallout: Surviving Today's Global Depression, The New Empire of Debt: The Rise and Fall of an Epic Financial Bubble, and I.O.U.S.A.: One Nation. Under Stress. In Debt.

********DID NOT RECEIVE ITEM********
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Great Adventure worth reading about.
I travel as often as I can and read this while taking a trip to Belarus so it felt a bit like a companion while spurring my desire for more travel. His fearlessness (in most places) is quite admirable and inspiring. This is the first book I've read from Paul Theroux though, and I feel like I've got lots of catching up to do as I thoroughly enjoyed this. I wonder if it makes sense to read 'The Great Railway Bazaar'? Anyway, I found this book very humorous, with many very funny parts. His astute sense of people and cultures, keen eye for nuance and beneath the surface observations gave me insight to certain countries and people and traditions which added to the enjoyment of reading this. The writing is very high quality with a nice flow making the book seem much shorter than it is (I read the kindle version and was surprised to see afterwards that the paper version is about 500 pages). I had some preconceived ideas about the author being cranky, arrogant, misanthropic, and a bit misogynist from several reviews here and things I had heard previously. I didn't find any of this (maybe a slight crankiness towards the end). He's just not very politically correct which I appreciate, has some strong opinions and seems comfortable with who he is, warts and all. He seems like he knows himself quite well and since he is a central character of the book that adds depth and cohesiveness for me. More than anything I felt his compassion for most of the people he met and the citizens of the country. His theory about the connection between a country's sex industry/trade and the general emotional health, and values and outlook of the country is an interesting one. I particularly enjoyed the sections on Vietnam, Central Asia, Thailand, Burma and Russia. Highly recommended.

boring
I like to read travel non-fiction in order to travel vicariously, but this trip was boring, and by the end, I was ready to escape from my travel companion, Theroux. (I did not read the Great Railway Bazaar). My first criticism is that the book is boring, in particular the long & detailed conversations with his author-friends. Other conversations - those with people he encounters, are also often boring, as is description of what he sees. My second criticism, less concrete, is that I ended up feeling irritation rather than rapport with the author & traveler, Theroux. He came across to me as pretentious, for example making fun of the appearance of people at whos behavior he took offense (eg, the Indian woman on the train who spoke too loudly on her cell phone), and, in a later chapter of the book, for congratulating the literary high-mindedness of the reader for making it this far. I was also irritated at his describing most young women he encounters in terms of their sexual attractiveness. I did however learn something about many places I previously knew nearly nothing about; so I give it 2 stars.

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