Bücher von Paul Theroux

Dark Star Safari is Paul Theroux's now classic account of a journey from Cairo to Cape Town.Travelling across bush and desert, down rivers and across lakes, and through country after country, Theroux visits some of the most beautiful landscapes on earth, and some of the most dangerous. It is a journey of discovery and of rediscovery -- of the unknown and the unexpected, but also of people and places he knew as a young and optimistic teacher forty years before.Safari in Swahili simply means "e;journey"e;, and this is the ultimate safari. It is Theroux in his element -- a trip where chance encounter is everything, where departure and arrival times are an irrelevance, and where contentment can be found balancing on the top of a truck in the middle of nowhere.Praise for Paul Theroux:'Theroux's work remains the standard by which other travel writing must be judged' Observer'One needs energy to keep up with the extraordinary, productive restlessness of Paul Theroux ... [He is] the most gifted, most prodigal writer of his generation'Jonathan Raban'Always a terrific teller of tales and conjurer of exotic locales, he writes lean prose that lopes along at a compelling pace'Sunday TimesPaul Theroux's books include Dark Star Safari, Ghost Train to the Eastern Star, Riding the Iron Rooster, The Great Railway Bazaar, The Elephanta Suite, A Dead Hand, The Tao of Travel and The Lower River. The Mosquito Coast and Dr Slaughter have both been made into successful films. Paul Theroux divides his time between Cape Cod and the Hawaiian islands.

Paul Theroux's Ghost Train to the Eastern Star is a journey from London to Asia by train. 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'.'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'Fans of Theroux are not likely to be disappointed. Theroux has great descriptive skill . . . the world is slightly less unknown by virtue of reading the book' Sunday Telegraph'Relaxed, curious, confident, surprisingly tender. Theroux's writing has an immediate, vivid and cursory quality that gives it a collective strength' Sunday Times'A brilliant eye, readable and vivid. Theroux has still got it' Observer'Fascinating, a joy to read' TatlerPaul Theroux's books include Dark Star Safari, Ghost Train to the Eastern Star, Riding the Iron Rooster, The Great Railway Bazaar, The Elephanta Suite, A Dead Hand, The Tao of Travel and The Lower River. The Mosquito Coast and Dr Slaughter have both been made into successful films. Paul Theroux divides his time between Cape Cod and the Hawaiian islands.

The Old Patagonian Express tells of Paul Theroux s train journey down the length of North and South America. Beginning on Boston s subway, he depicts a voyage from ice-bound Massachusetts to the arid plateau of Argentina s most southerly tip, via pretty Central American towns and the ancient Incan city of Macchu Pichu. Shivering and sweating by turns as the temperature and altitude rise and plummet, he describes the people he encountered thrown in with the tedious, and unavoidable, Mr Thornberry in Lim n and reading to the legendary blind writer, Jorge Luis Borges, in Buenos Aires. Witty, sharply observed and beautifully written, this is a richly evocative account of travelling to the end of the line .

The Great Railway Bazaar is Paul Theroux's classic and much-loved homage to train travel. The Orient Express; The Khyber Pass Local; the Delhi Mail from Jaipur; the Golden Arrow of Kuala; the Trans-Siberian Express; these are just some of the trains steaming through Paul Theroux's epic rail journey from London across Europe through India and Asia. This was a trip of discovery made in the mid-seventies, a time before the West had embraced the places, peoples, food, faiths and cultures of the East. For us now, as much as for Theroux then, to visit the lands of The Great Railway Bazaar is an encounter with all that is truly foreign and exotic - and with what we have since lost.Praise for Paul Theroux:'Theroux's work remains the standard by which other travel writing must be judged' Observer'One needs energy to keep up with the extraordinary, productive restlessness of Paul Theroux ... [He is] the most gifted, most prodigal writer of his generation'Jonathan Raban'Always a terrific teller of tales and conjurer of exotic locales, he writes lean prose that lopes along at a compelling pace'Sunday TimesPaul Theroux's books include Dark Star Safari, Ghost Train to the Eastern Star, Riding the Iron Rooster, The Great Railway Bazaar, The Elephanta Suite, A Dead Hand, The Tao of Travel and The Lower River. The Mosquito Coast and Dr Slaughter have both been made into successful films. Paul Theroux divides his time between Cape Cod and the Hawaiian islands.

"At age nineteen, young Eton graduate Eric Blair set sail for India, dreading the assignment ahead. Along with several other young conscripts, he would be trained for three years as a servant of the British Empire, overseeing the local policemen in Burma. Navigating the social, racial, and class politics of his fellow British at the same time as he learned the local languages and struggled to control his men would prove difficult enough. But doing all of this while grappling with his own self-worth, his sense that he was not cut out for this, is soon overwhelming for the young Blair. Eventually, his clashes with his superiors, and the drama that unfolds in this hot, beautiful land, will change him forever."--

A deliciously dark, atmospheric novel about family and brotherhood from one of America's most distinctive writersThere's sibling rivalry and then there's the relationship of brothers Cal and Frank Belanger, which takes fraternal antipathy to a whole new level. Enemies seemingly since childhood, the small town of Littleford, where they are nicknamed 'The Bad Angle Brothers', just isn't big enough to hold them both. So Cal strikes out for the world's wild places -- a gifted geologist in search of gold and other precious minerals, leaving Frank to develop a successful career as the town's lawyer, fixer and local hero.Apart, their differences are muted by distance, but when Cal, newly rich and newly wed, returns to the town of his birth, to buy a house and raise a family, Frank gives him the opposite of a brotherly welcome. From undermining Cal's marriage, while Cal is away on business, to torpedoing his finances, nothing is off the table, setting the scene for a tale of gleefully vicious betrayals and reprisals, culminating in the ultimate plan: murder.Few authors have as keen an eye for human nature as the inimitable Paul Theroux, and this riveting tale of adventure, betrayal, and the true cost of family bonds is a remarkable new work from one of America's most distinctive writers.

When Jerry Delfont, an aimless travel writer with writer's block (his ?dead hand?), receives a letter from an American philanthropist, Mrs. Merrill Unger, with news of a scandal involving an Indian friend of her son's, he is intrigued. Who is the dead boy, found on the floor of a cheap hotel room? How and why did he die? And what is Jerry to make of a patch of carpet, and a package containing a human hand? He is swiftly captivated by the beautiful, mysterious Mrs. Unger?and revived by her tantric massages?but the circumstances surrounding the dead boy cause him increasingly to doubt the woman's motives and the exact nature of her philanthropy. Without much to go on, Jerry pursues answers from the teeming streets of Calcutta to Uttar Pradesh. It is a dark and twisted trail of obsession and need. Beautifully written, A Dead Hand demonstrates the powerful evocation of place and character that has made Paul Theroux one of the most perceptive and engaging writers today.

From the best-selling author of Dark Star Safari and Hotel Honolulu, Paul Theroux's latest offers provocative tales of memory and desire. The sensual story of an unusual love affair leads the collection. The thrill and risk of pursuit and conquest mark the accompanying stories, which tell of the sexual awakening and rites of passage of a Boston boyhood, the ruin of a writer in Africa, and the bewitchment of a retiree in Hawaii. Filled with Theroux's typically exquisite yet devastating descriptions of people and places, The Stranger at the Palazzo D'Oro evokes "the complexities of matters of the heart with subtlety and grace" (People).

Already a best-selling addition to the series, this year's Best American Travel Writing is a far-flung collection chosen by travel writer extraordinaire Paul Theroux, who has selected pieces about ?the spell in the wilderness, the letter home from foreign parts, the dangerous adventure, the sentimental journey, the exposé, the shocking revelation, the eyewitness report, the ordeal, the quest . . . Travel is an attitude, a state of mind.? Theroux's most recent novel is Hotel Honolulu.

Zehn Jahre nach seiner ersten großen Reise in das »Königreich des Lichts« kehrt Paul Theroux zurück in sein geliebtes Afrika - und findet ein zerstörtes Paradies. Er will von Kapstadt durch Namibia und Angola nach Timbuktu reisen, doch mit jeder Meile nordwärts werden das Elend, die Korruption und sein Ringen mit den Entwicklungen des 21. Jahrhunderts und den Bemühungen der Hilfsorganisationen gewaltiger. Trotz aller Schönheit, von der er mit Wärme erzählt, bricht er seine Reise ins Herz der Finsternis ab und kehrt zurück nach Südafrika.Sein Buch erzählt von einem Kontinent im Niedergang, von einem empfindsamen Menschen und von dessen Erschütterungen. Intensiv, kontrovers und mitreißend.

Zwei Monate lang reist Paul Theroux von seiner Heimatstadt Medford, Massachusetts südwärts. Luxuszüge und schmuddelige Lokalbahnen bringen ihn fort aus dem verschneiten Boston bis zur Endstation Esquel im Hochland Argentiniens. Auf seiner Reise begegnet er Fußballrowdys in El Salvador und amerikanischen Aussteigern in Costa Rica, er setzt über den Panamakanal, spricht mit den Straßenkindern in Kolumbien, teilt sich ein Hotelzimmer mit den Ratten in Ecuador, wird höhenkrank in Peru und liest nächtens in Buenos Aires dem greisen, blinden Jorge Luis Borges Gedichte vor - eine legendäre Begegnung, über die die New York Times schrieb: "Allein diese Szene rechtfertigt den Preis des Buches. "

Paul Theroux, der wohl bekannteste Reiseliterat unserer Zeit, erkundet erstmals seine Heimat. Auf seinem Roadtrip durch die Südstaaten erlebt er die USA als ein Land voller Härten, in dem ihm zugleich ungeahnter Mut, Herzlichkeit und Gemeinschaftsgefühl begegnen. Er landet in Geisterstädten, Freikirchen und auf Waffenausstellungen entlang des »Old Man«, des Mississippi. Rassismus und die Folgen von jahrhundertelanger Segregation sind allgegenwärtig. Theroux begibt sich hinein in diese gespaltene Gesellschaft, fragt nach und hört zu, getrieben von einer unstillbaren Neugier auf die Menschen und ihre Leben. Für alle, die die Menschen Amerikas und die Zerrissenheit ihres Landes verstehen möchten - »Tief im Süden« ist das richtige Buch zur richtigen Zeit.

"Suave and accomplished . . . [The stories] are unsettling, resistant to tidy denouement and faintly misanthropic." - Washington Post "Beneath the deceptive elegance of these stories, land mines lurk, and Theroux detonates them with gusto." - O, the Oprah Magazine A family watches their patriarch transform into the singing, wisecracking lead of an old-timey minstrel show. An art collector publicly destroys his most valuable pieces. Two boys stand by as their father wages war on the raccoons living under their house. In this new collection, acclaimed author Paul Theroux shows us humanity possessed, consumed by compulsive desire, always with his carefully honed eye for detail and the subtle idiosyncrasies that bring his characters to life. Searing, dark, and sure to unsettle, Mr. Bones is a stunning display of Theroux's "fluent, faintly sinister powers of vision and imagination" (The New Yorker). "Fans of Theroux's fiction will be pleased to observe, in the twenty stories collected in Mr. Bones, clear evidence of how little he has mellowed over time . . . Mr. Bones is a series of characteristically dark and sharply focused snapshots from the world that Paul Theroux has observed-and invented." - Francine Prose, New York Times Book Review

A richly detailed, darkly hilarious novel of a family held together and torn apart by its magnificently narcissistic matriarch

In one of his most exotic and breathtaking journeys, the intrepid traveler Paul Theroux ventures to the South Pacific, exploring fifty-one islands by collapsible kayak. Beginning in New Zealand's rain forests and ultimately coming to shore thousands of miles away in Hawaii, Theroux paddles alone over isolated atolls, through dirty harbors and shark-filled waters, and along treacherous coastlines. This exhilarating tropical epic is full of disarming observations and high adventure.

One of the most acclaimed travel writers of our time turns his unflinching eye on an American South too often overlooked.

First published more than thirty years ago, Paul Theroux's strange, unique, and hugely entertaining railway odyssey has become a modern classic of travel literature. Here Theroux recounts his early adventures on an unusual grand continental tour. Asia's fabled trains -- the Orient Express, the Khyber Pass Local, the Frontier Mail, the Golden Arrow to Kuala Lumpur, the Mandalay Express, the Trans-Siberian Express -- are the stars of a journey that takes him on a loop eastbound from London's Victoria Station to Tokyo Central, then back from Japan on the Trans-Siberian. Brimming with Theroux's signature humor and wry observations, this engrossing chronicle is essential reading for both the ardent adventurer and the armchair traveler.

A delectable collection of Theroux's recent writing on great places, people, and prose.