Product Description

Paul Theroux invites us to join him on one of his most exotic and tantalizing adventures exploring the coasts and blue lagoons of the Pacific Islands, and taking up residence to discover the secrets of these isles. Theroux is a mesmerizing narrator – brilliant, witty, keenly perceptive as he floats through Gauguin landscapes, sails in the wake of Captain Cook and recalls the bewitching tales of Jack London and Robert Louis Stevenson. Alone in his kayak, paddling to seldom visited shores, he glides through time and space, discovering a world of islands, their remarkable people, and in turn, happiness. ‘A sharp, fascinating and highly entertaining book … Theroux at his best’ Daily Telegraph.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #49446 in Books
• Published on: 2001-01-25
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 752 pages

About the Author
Paul Theroux was born in Medford, Massachusetts, in 1941, and published his first novel, Waldo, in 1967. His subsequent novels include Picture Palace, winner of the Whitbread Prize for Fiction, The Mosquito Coast, and the hugely acclaimed, Kowloon Tong. His travel books include The Great Railway Bazaar and The Pillars of Hercules.

Customer Reviews

A dismal whinge
This book is a prolonged snivel about the pain of voluntarily going to places the author then found tacky, hostile or boring. By his own account he had not a moment's pleasure from his travels until he reached Hawaii, where it was all American and OK and Not Foreign. The only puzzle is why he did not at a much earlier stage of the trip get on a plane and go there direct; presumably he'd taken an advance from his publisher and had to deliver a book of some sort. The whole thing carries a moral for modern travellers: if you can't engage constructively with the places you go to, then please, please, stay at home - that way you'll be happier, the foreign people will be happier, and you won't needlessley contribute to airline CO2 emissions.

Wonderful Corrective to Lonely Planet Overkill
I found this a well-written, very funny antidote to the endlessly sunny, ultimately irritating "travel copy" contained in my Lonely Planet guidebook. Theroux is the best antidote to being stuck on some never-ending bus-ferry-train journey in the depths of the Third World where there are no Pyramids, Taj Mahals or Great Walls, within a thousand miles, the people are not warm and gracious but poor and grasping and the governments in charge are not victims of the West but inept imbezzelers and tin pot tyrants.

Theroux rejuvenates the weary long distance traveller with his unfailing wit, good sense and stubborn determination to be beholden to no one.

I particulary liked in this book his account of Australia and New Zealand struggling with their identities in a post 1973 (Britain joining the EU) world. Good writing, and it corresponded with what I was seeing in these countries at the times. His account of the NZ Prime Minister making a pig of herself with her food after running down John F. Kennedy for his personal habits is a bit of satirical writing worthy of Gore Vidal.

His depiction of the the modern squalor and boredom of much of Pacific island life matched my experiences in places as diverse as Kuwait, Hong Kong and Singapore (of which Theroux writes about with such accuracy and wit - be sure to try his Kowloon Tong and Saint Jack if you like this one).

And despite the sad realities, Theroux almost always likes the places he visits!

Theroux spins out
This is Theroux at his best. Obviously bitter from his failed marriage, he sets out to paddle around the Pacific Islands. Altough at 750 pages this looks a long book, it is in fact a gripping and enlightining look at a region which receives little coverage in many parts of the globe.

Theroux is even more cynical than usual which actually raises the laugh quota. Although sometimes the views seem a little harsh,he is always perceptive and entertaining.