![]() ![]() As a guide it may be rather dated, but Theroux's gonzo travelogue remains a beautifully written meditation on the art of the journey. ![]() In this new edition Theroux admits that when he began his epic journey in 1973 he had no idea how to write a travel book. From the Khyber Railway and the Mandalay Express, to the Trans-Siberian Railway (at 6,000 miles, the longest train journey in the world), each offers Theroux clues to national character: in Iran trains have prayer mats, in Ceylon a car is reserved for Buddhist monks, Vietnamese locomotives had bulletproof glass, and in Russia every train had a samovar. Following Michael Frayn's dictum that "the journey is the goal", the resulting book is not so much about places as the passage to them. Starting from London's Victoria station he travelled by train east through Asia to Tokyo Central and then back across Russia. ![]() ![]() As a boy in America, he had been bewitched by the siren-sound of train whistles on the nearby Boston and Maine railroad. The Great Railway Bazaar, by Paul Theroux (Penguin, £9.99)Ĭonvinced that travel books were written by bores for bores, Paul Theroux decided to show people how it should be done. ![]()
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