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 enlarge | Author: Paul Theroux
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Category: Book
List Price: $28.00
Buy New: $15.44
You Save: $12.56 (45%)
New (39) from $15.44
Avg. Customer Rating:  45 reviews
Sales Rank: 12990
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 512
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.6
Dimensions (in): 9.1 x 6.1 x 1.7
ISBN: 0618418873
Dewey Decimal Number: 915.04425092
EAN: 9780618418879
ASIN: 0618418873
Publication Date: August 18, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: Brand New, Perfect Condition, Please allow 4-14 business days for delivery. 100% Money Back Guarantee, Over 1,000,000 customers served.
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| Customer Reviews:
 On The Rails Again December 16, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
There's an incredible irony about Paul Theroux. For a man who likes to do it his way and travel alone, enjoying this world in isolation, through his books, he takes the world along with him. Neat trick huh?
I never thought Theroux would write a sequel to "The Great Railway Bazaar" and am so glad he decided to revisit that wonderous journey. Through modern and delightful Turkey, Theroux takes us through Turkmenistanm, Uzbekstan, India, Thailand, Cambodia, Singapore, Japan etc. Theroux certainly shows the hypocrisy of Singapore, a thoroughly robotic state where the dirt that lies beneath is hidden by the government's attempt to mask it's seedy undercore with an antiseptic Stepford Wives film of cleanliness and a rigid acquiessence to authority.
Theroux's nightmare journey into Cambodia is especially wrenching. How these people continue to survive when so much misery has affected almost every person is beyond belief.
Theroux concentrates his Japanese journey almost entirely on the sexual addictions and sexual icons of that country. Fascinating, but it would have been more intriguing if he had let himself go a bit more and given us a rounder perspective of Japan today.
Throughly enjoyable was Theroux's take on Russia and his final trek from Vladivostok back to Moscow, and that's because Theroux shows Russia through Russian eyes as he does when he stopped in Vladivostok and Perm. Nothing changes. Russians still drink themselves into a stupor, and beyond Moscow is a vast white death of a past where poverty and filth rule. Theroux's stay in Perm is evidence enough, although Vladivostok is a thuggish nightmare where through the angry eyes of one woman, fear rules. In Russia, history haunts the landscape; it might as well be 1905 instead of the 21st century.
Theroux is also kind. He's not ashamed to help someone financially, and it's nice to see that he believes when you save one person, you in a sense, save the world. His cynicism also makes Theroux a fascinating travel writer. He's brutally honest too about his personal journeys. At times the reader feels like a vouyeur. At times you can smell the grit and grime of the alleyways and stench of the train journey. Often you laugh along with Theroux at the pomposities of the people he meets and madness of a dictator. His book, and all his travel books, are a banquet where you just can't get enough.
What's next for Theroux? Hopefully, he'll travel the Balkans and come back safe with a rousing adventure, or journey to Alaska and sits on a porch with Sarah Palin looking at Russia and giving us a hoot of a ride.
 Couldn't get into it December 11, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I borrowed this book on CDs from the library because the Amazon description made it sound interesting. I gave up on it after listening to 2 of 25 CDs. The author does indeed seem to be having a lousy time as he begins this long trip, reminiscing about how his marriage was falling apart during his previous journey and dwelling excessively on the dreary details of the landscape. I was not enticed to spend any more of my precious personal time travelling with him.
Theroux deserves Nobel Prize December 9, 2008
When Paul Theroux was in his twenties he decided that in order to prove to himself that he was serious about the intimidating craft of writing, he would write a book a year. Forty-some years have passed, and Theroux should certainly be able to look himself in the mirror. I have read all forty-some of his books and found nearly every one of them, including "Ghost Star," to be a haunting, captivating masterpiece. I've written two travel memoirs of my own [Take Me With You: A Round-the-World Journey to Invite a Stranger Home and All the Right Places] -- each took me about four years to complete, and each left me completely drained. I sit in awe of Theroux and believe the incredible body of work he has produced screams "Nobel Prize!"
A keen eye, mellowed by wisdom December 8, 2008
This trip is first-class. Theroux's perceptions of places, people and events is now tempered by the wisdom of age and not the narrow cynicism of youth. Of particular interest are his stops in Georgia, Sri Lanka, and northern Japan. The chapter on the Trans-Siberian was all too fleeting....
Quite a constitution and quite a writer. November 24, 2008
Considering the number of trips on marginal trains through poor 3rd world countries Paul Theroux has taken it seems to me a tribute to his cast-iron gut that he has even survived this long, and miraculous that he has the stamina to continue going on these journeys. I really thought "Dark Star Safari" would be his last trip, although I'm glad it was not, because I've enjoyed his travel writing through the years. I enjoyed this book, although the original "Great Railway Bazaar" is in some places more amusing because the younger Paul Theroux wasn't as rich or well-connected as he is now so he had to settle for very lowly conditions sometimes, which he always wrote about entertainingly. Also the U.S.S.R. was there when he took his first trip, and that dismal place often brought out the blackly humorous best in travel writers. Some of the countries he travels through in this follow-up (for instance Uzbekistan,) don't seem to have interested him enough to do his best writing, and he is almost fulsome at times when it comes to describing Turkey, but he is amusing when it comes to describing Turkmenistan and its awful dictator the (happily) late Saparmyrat Niyazov. He is probably best when it comes to describing his travels through India, a place the he seems to like very much. He is good at describing the over-crowded although energetic Bombay, and his fame gets him an entrance into one of Bangalore's many call centers where he gently grills the managers on how much they underpay their employees. He also writes entertainingly about the sanitized speed and efficiency of Japan (although I don't think as many amusing things happened to him this time around,) and Russia. (Which sounds much nicer to travel through but isn't as much fun to read about.)
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