Thirty years ago the author left London and travelled across Asia and back again by train. Now he 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. This book presents a chronicle of his travels.

Ghost train to the eastern star - on the tracks of 'the great railway bazaar'

"Theroux possesses a fabulously nasty sense of humor." - Stephen King, New York Times Book Review   To those in her Cape Cod town, Mother is an exemplar of piety, frugality, and hard work. To her husband and seven children, she is a selfish, petty tyrant. She excels at playing her offspring against each other. Her favorite, Angela, died in childbirth; only Angela really understands her, she tells the others. The others include the officious lawyer, Fred; the uproarious professor, Floyd; a pair of inseparable sisters whose devotion to Mother has consumed their lives; and JP, the narrator, a successful writer whose work she disparages. As she lives well past the age of one hundred, her brood struggles with and among themselves to shed her viselike hold on them.                  Mother Land is a piercing portrait of how a parent's narcissism impacts a family. While the particulars of his tale are unique, Paul Theroux encapsulates with acute clarity and wisdom a circumstance that is familiar to millions of readers.   "Paul Theroux ladles a steaming cup of dysfunctional-family chowder in Mother Land." - Vanity Fair  "An engrossing, emotionally tangled and often merciless examination of family and self .

Mother Land

The "Old Patagonian Express" was the last train Paul Theroux took in his journey from Boston to Patagonia. This is the story of his journey, a journey of contrasts in people, in temperature, in scenery, in altitude, and in attitude.

The old patagonian express: by train through the americas

"A portrait of an optimist with curiosity and affection for humanity in all its forms."-The New York Times Book Review   "Theroux is at the top of his game with his third collection of essays, a magisterial grouping of intimate remembrances, globe-trotting adventures, and incisive literary critiques."-Publishers Weekly, Starred Review  "Theroux's observations are so keen and writerly skills so sharp that he butter-slices narratives with a razor-thin surgeon's scalpel, masterfully serving up both the world's dark underbelly and its gloriously uplifting sustenance of love, longing and wonder-lust." -Forbes Paul Theroux's latest collection of essays applies his signature searching curiosity to a life lived as much in reading as on the road. This writerly tour-de-force features a satisfyingly varied selection of topics. Travel essays take us to Ecuador, Zimbabwe, and Hawaii, to name a few. Gems of literary criticism reveal fascinating depth in the work of Henry David Thoreau, Muriel Spark, Joseph Conrad, and Hunter Thompson. And in a series of breathtakingly personal profiles, we take a helicopter ride with Elizabeth Taylor, go diagnosing with Oliver Sacks, eavesdrop on the day-to-day life of a Manhattan dominatrix, and explore New York with Robin Williams. An extended meditation on the craft of writing binds together this wide-ranging collection, along with Theroux's constant quest for the authentic in a person or in a place.

Figures In A Landscape - People and Places

In Dark Star Safari the wittily observant and endearingly irascible Paul Theroux takes readers the length of Africa by rattletrap bus, dugout canoe, cattle truck, armed convoy, ferry, and train. In the course of his epic and enlightening journey, he endures danger, delay, and dismaying circumstances. Gauging the state of affairs, he talks to Africans, aid workers, missionaries, and tourists. What results is an insightful meditation on the history, politics, and beauty of Africa and its people, and "a vivid portrayal of the secret sweetness, the hidden vitality, and the long-patient hope that lies just beneath the surface" (Rocky Mountain News). In a new postscript, Theroux recounts the dramatic events of a return to Africa to visit Zimbabwe.

Safari noir: Du Caire au Cap a travers les terres

Picture Palace - A Novel

AN APPLE ORIGINAL SERIES FROM APPLE TV+ STARRING JUSTIN THEROUX, SEASON 2 STREAMING NOW"An Impressive and disturbing vision of the American psyche."-Washington Post Book WorldFrom legendary writer Paul Theroux, an international bestseller that is a spellbinding adventure story of an American family that rejects its homeland and tries to find a happier life in the jungles of Central America. The paranoid and brilliant inventor Allie Fox uproots his family from their New England farm to live in the Honduran jungle, determined to build a civilization better than the one they've left. An individualist, Allie sees modern America as wasteful, immoral, and messy. Fleeing from materialism and conformity, he hopes to rediscover a purer life. Told by fourteen-year-old Charlie Fox, who observes his father with a mixture of love, astonishment, and ultimately horror, The Mosquito Coast is a twisted Swiss Family Robinson or an ironic take on Robinson Crusoe. For as Allie becomes ever more lost to reality, this utopian experiment takes a dark turn as his obsessions lead the family toward unimaginable danger.

The Mosquito Coast

Slade Steadman's lone opus, published twenty years ago, was Trespassing, a cult classic about his travels through dozens of countries without benefit of passport. With his soon-to-be-ex-girlfriend Ava in tow, Steadman sets out for Ecuador's jungle in search of a rare hallucinogenic drug and the cure for his writer's block. Amid a gang of thrill-seeking tourists, he finds his drug and his inspiration but is beset with an unnerving side effect-periodic blindness. His world is altered profoundly: Ava stays by his side, he writes an erotic, autobiographical novel with the drug serving as muse, and he returns to stardom. Steadman becomes addicted to the drug and the insights it provides, only to have them desert him, along with his sight. Will he regain his vision? His visions? Or will he forgo the world of his imagining and his ambition? As Theroux leads us toward the answers, he makes fresh magic out of the venerable intertwined themes of sight and insight. He also offers incisive, sometimes hilarious takes on the manifold ironies of travel, of trespass and trangession, and of the trappings of the writer's life-from the fear of the blank page to the unexpected challenges of the book tour.

Ghost train to the eastern star - on the tracks of 'the great railway bazaar'

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