Ghost Train to the Eastern Star
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'Funny, informative, lyrical. Theroux is a fabulously good writer. The brilliance lies in his ability to create a broad sweep of many countries' Guardian 'A dazzler, giving us the highs and lows of his journey and tenderness and acerbic humour ... fellow-travelling weirdoes, amateur taxi drivers, bar-girls and long-suffering locals are brought vividly to life' Spectator 'Relaxed, curious, confident, surprisingly tender. Theroux's writing has an immediate, vivid and cursory quality that gives it a collective strength' Sunday Times
Product Description
Thirty years ago Paul Theroux left London and travelled across Asia and back again by train. His account of the journey - The Great Railway Bazaar - was a landmark book and made his name as the foremost travel writer of his generation. Now Theroux makes the trip all over again. Through Eastern Europe, India and Asia to discover the changes that have swept the continents, and also to learn what an old man will make of a young man's journey. Ghost Train to the Eastern Star is a brilliant chronicle of change and an exploration of how travel is 'the saddest of pleasures'.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
11 of 12 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
What makes a great travel writer? Is it an understanding that a travel book does not just reflect the places you are privileged enough to visit, the people you meet or the effect they have one you. Is it the ability to convey to the reader your sense of wonder and occasional bemusement at the experiences you gain?
Paul Theroux has written a series of wonderful travel books; here he retraces a journey made thirty-three years previously and records the changes that have taken place. It is a book about the way the world has changed for better and for worse. The young writer worrying about his marriage has become a happier and more content traveller who finds friendship and something of interest wherever he goes. As he ventures through Asia he looks up other distinguished writers, visits sites of sentimental interest and brings to life scenes which affect him whether it is the sight of child prostitues or relentless sprawling cities. Yet his writing also is a celebration of the magic of train travel by a writer who never becomes rushed and is always intrigued by the men and women who share his compartment.
Paul Theroux has written a series of wonderful travel books; here he retraces a journey made thirty-three years previously and records the changes that have taken place. It is a book about the way the world has changed for better and for worse. The young writer worrying about his marriage has become a happier and more content traveller who finds friendship and something of interest wherever he goes. As he ventures through Asia he looks up other distinguished writers, visits sites of sentimental interest and brings to life scenes which affect him whether it is the sight of child prostitues or relentless sprawling cities. Yet his writing also is a celebration of the magic of train travel by a writer who never becomes rushed and is always intrigued by the men and women who share his compartment.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
In "Ghost Train to the Eastern Star" the famous American travel writer Paul Theroux, now in old age, retraces the route that he took as a young man and which led to his breakthrough book "The Great Railway Bazaar" (The Great Railway Bazaar: By Train Through Asia (Penguin Modern Classics)). This offers an opportunity not just for another travel book about Asia and reflections on what has changed in that mighty continent in the last 30-odd years, but also for reflections on the changes to Theroux himself. The narration for that reason is more personal and more philosophical than most of his works, which gives the book a warm atmosphere.
Theroux generally in this book is as competent, lively and observant as ever, making the book excellent reading for fans of his work. That he reveals more about the circumstances in which he wrote his first great book and the vagaries of his life only add to this. However, there are some flaws also. Theroux gets somewhat too ponderous about being old and the consequences of this, so the endless ruminations on the strength of old people can get on one's nerves, and it also seems to have led to an entirely baseless playing up of the value of Buddhist theology. Aside from that, there are also more and more significant errors than usual. Stalin did not kill 40 million people; Putin was never leader of the KGB (in fact he had a fairly unimportant job); Hitler was not born in Linz, but in Braunau am Inn; and so on. He also seems to have nothing good to say about Europe any more, and his persistently negative tone about it, even Paris, contrasts oddly with his much more upbeat descriptions of much poorer countries like Sri Lanka and Vietnam.
Nonetheless, the book is just as much a pleasurable classic of travel writing as most of Theroux's other masterpieces. Particularly notable is the interview with the late Sir Arthur C. Clarke, just before he died, which gives an interesting and melancholy insight into the difficult life of that famous writer. Also interesting are his trips through Central Asia, a part of the world rarely visited even by travel writers and which is highly underrepresented in world media, despite its increasing strategic importance relative to places like Iran, Afghanistan, Russia and Pakistan. On the whole, I recommend this book to fans of travel writing, if one is willing to take some of his grumpiness with a pinch of salt.
Theroux generally in this book is as competent, lively and observant as ever, making the book excellent reading for fans of his work. That he reveals more about the circumstances in which he wrote his first great book and the vagaries of his life only add to this. However, there are some flaws also. Theroux gets somewhat too ponderous about being old and the consequences of this, so the endless ruminations on the strength of old people can get on one's nerves, and it also seems to have led to an entirely baseless playing up of the value of Buddhist theology. Aside from that, there are also more and more significant errors than usual. Stalin did not kill 40 million people; Putin was never leader of the KGB (in fact he had a fairly unimportant job); Hitler was not born in Linz, but in Braunau am Inn; and so on. He also seems to have nothing good to say about Europe any more, and his persistently negative tone about it, even Paris, contrasts oddly with his much more upbeat descriptions of much poorer countries like Sri Lanka and Vietnam.
Nonetheless, the book is just as much a pleasurable classic of travel writing as most of Theroux's other masterpieces. Particularly notable is the interview with the late Sir Arthur C. Clarke, just before he died, which gives an interesting and melancholy insight into the difficult life of that famous writer. Also interesting are his trips through Central Asia, a part of the world rarely visited even by travel writers and which is highly underrepresented in world media, despite its increasing strategic importance relative to places like Iran, Afghanistan, Russia and Pakistan. On the whole, I recommend this book to fans of travel writing, if one is willing to take some of his grumpiness with a pinch of salt.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
From the moment I started reading I was hooked. I devoured this book, taking any spare moment I had - on the train, a quiet moment at work, even walking home from the station - to read just a little bit more. Each time I put it down I felt disappointed that I'd have to spend a little less of the day on the train to Mandalay.
That is until I actually started to reflect on what I had been reading. Theroux's writing is fantastic - engaging and vivid, I'd take a thousand words from him over a picture any day. But there are two problems that plague his otherwise readable account - his hypocrisy, and above all, his ego.
He criticises other travel writers who make hasty generalisations and yet Theroux is quite happy to pass judgement on an entire nation after a brief sojourn in some faceless city, quite removed from the country's day-to-day reality. He even makes these comments now and again after an afternoon's stroll around a station followed by a beer and sandwich, or, even worse, based on a good stare out of a train window.
But what gets really tiresome is that Theroux enjoys massaging his ego almost as much as he enjoys his Thai massage in chapter 19. His glowing description of a backpacker reading one of his novels on a train to Penang or his claim that his previous trans-Asian travelogue had 'worked magic' come off as thinly-veiled arrogance.
But what rescues the book is his excellent writing style. It's so engrossing that it disguises the fact that he's not making sense or he's being insufferably pompous. Even his frequent meditations that sometimes descend into nonsensical aphorisms and cliche are a joy to read. Of course, this isn't unrelated to his egotism. Theroux is a man who is confident with words, and that translates into an author capable of brilliantly rendering a scene or even, in his more abstract moments, amazing the reader with his command of language. He even manages to convey genuine emotion in his travel writing (for example, the plights of the Ukrainian and the Thai prostitutes), something most writers in this genre struggle with, given that while travelling each relationship is usually little more than a fleeting acquaintance.
Altogether, The Ghost Train loses a star for it's obvious flaws but it is written with such flair that it remains an excellent read.
That is until I actually started to reflect on what I had been reading. Theroux's writing is fantastic - engaging and vivid, I'd take a thousand words from him over a picture any day. But there are two problems that plague his otherwise readable account - his hypocrisy, and above all, his ego.
He criticises other travel writers who make hasty generalisations and yet Theroux is quite happy to pass judgement on an entire nation after a brief sojourn in some faceless city, quite removed from the country's day-to-day reality. He even makes these comments now and again after an afternoon's stroll around a station followed by a beer and sandwich, or, even worse, based on a good stare out of a train window.
But what gets really tiresome is that Theroux enjoys massaging his ego almost as much as he enjoys his Thai massage in chapter 19. His glowing description of a backpacker reading one of his novels on a train to Penang or his claim that his previous trans-Asian travelogue had 'worked magic' come off as thinly-veiled arrogance.
But what rescues the book is his excellent writing style. It's so engrossing that it disguises the fact that he's not making sense or he's being insufferably pompous. Even his frequent meditations that sometimes descend into nonsensical aphorisms and cliche are a joy to read. Of course, this isn't unrelated to his egotism. Theroux is a man who is confident with words, and that translates into an author capable of brilliantly rendering a scene or even, in his more abstract moments, amazing the reader with his command of language. He even manages to convey genuine emotion in his travel writing (for example, the plights of the Ukrainian and the Thai prostitutes), something most writers in this genre struggle with, given that while travelling each relationship is usually little more than a fleeting acquaintance.
Altogether, The Ghost Train loses a star for it's obvious flaws but it is written with such flair that it remains an excellent read.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Encore
Ghost Train to the Eastern Star is one of Paul Theroux's finest travel books. Technically, it's better than the book that inspired it, his own The Great Railway Bazaar, the... Read more
Published 20 days ago by Troy Parfitt
Reliability in question
Paul Theroux is credited with saying "Tourists don't know where they've been, travelers don't know where they're going." PT's style is highly readable. Read more
Published 26 days ago by Gps Rogers
A delight
In 1975 Paul Theroux published The Great Railway Bazaar, his account of travelling across Asia by train. Read more
Published 5 months ago by Reader
A masterpiece
This book is mind-blowing. Theroux recreates the ambitious journey he made thirty or so years ago - the result of which was The Great Railway Bazaar. Read more
Published 13 months ago by Hector Warrington
Not bad for an old ghost--Paul Theroux does it well, again
V.S. Naipaul, Paul Theroux's erstwhile mentor, once said in an interview, "To me, the most interesting thing one can do is to go back to a country, look at it again, and write it... Read more
Published on 3 Oct 2009 by G. Heath
getting older - getting softer
For years Theroux was up there with the best of travel writers. It was always worth ignoring his constant narcissism to reach behind for truly acid perceptions that always had the... Read more
Published on 21 Aug 2009 by Milon Cadman
The delights of train travel
The Ghost Train to the Eastern Star: On the Tracks of 'The Great Railway Bazaar'
Paul Theroux returns to visit places, and sometimes people, he met in his early thirties. Read more
Paul Theroux returns to visit places, and sometimes people, he met in his early thirties. Read more
Published on 27 July 2009 by SusieH
A Writer Reflects on His Life and Humanity by Revisiting His Past
If you want a book about how to travel by train, skip this one.
If you want a book about what you'll discover about yourself if you revisit old haunts, you may find this... Read more
If you want a book about what you'll discover about yourself if you revisit old haunts, you may find this... Read more
Published on 4 Oct 2008 by Donald Mitchell
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