Ghost Train to the Eastern Star: 28,000 Miles in Search of the Railway Bazaar

I loved that Paul Theroux, a man whose name is recognized by everyone in the fiction and non fiction fields, decided to basically recreate a journey he took when he was in his twenties and had no money. For criticism I have to say it is a huge amount of territory to cover, going from London to Japan by train, basically. A person can only observe so much of each country, and so there are bound to be natives of that country who disagree with the snapshot taken on that day(s). The book was written in 2006 when Bush was President and the war with Iraq was going on. It was brave of Paul Theroux, who was a literary "darling" for a while there-- Mosquito Coast definitely made his name-- to even travel to these areas where there is unrest, terrorism, instability and face it-- real danger. In a way all of us sitting back in the comfort of mostly safe America are living vicariously through these observations. Theroux has always had an edge to his writing, some elements of danger and sexuality, that keep his novels and articles interesting. He's simply a divinely gifted storyteller. He does not fail here, although the task of this extremely hard journey sometimes gets a tad tedious. For an older guy who is already world famous to mostly bunk in shared compartments on trains with --whoever!-- share bathrooms, eat native cuisine, and fake it till you make it with language barriers-- well it's amazing that he even took on this task. He is mostly good natured, but he hates missionaries, he hates but expects hustlers ( taxicab rip-offs, for instance) and he likes to take the native stance of disliking his own country, (the ugly American )sometimes. When you read about the bombings of Japan and Vietnam, you feel their side of the story. Even though Japan "started" it-- my words, not Paul's-- you feel a terrible disgrace at war itself and how history, architecture, spiritual temples, and humankind, can be just forever lost because of this brutality ( no matter whose "side" you were on.)Of course my favorite parts were vignettes about specific people. I like knowing what Zoroastrians were like, or rickshaw operators, or Siberian prisons, or the new Vietnam. I love the monk who shared his compartment. I love his descriptions of Istanbul and Singapore, and the serenity ( mostly) of Japan. I love the comic book culture part of Japan. Despots and dictators are exposed for what they did to their countries. The book makes you thank your stars that you live in a democracy ( at least I do) even though many think our system is flawed. In other words, yes, read the book to know how damn lucky you really are !! As a woman I could not identify with as many sexual come-ons he received. But I imagine a Westerner man would receive this many in countries like Thailand which are known for a sexual Disneyland atmosphere. The children in the sex trade-- where Theroux walks down a dark road to a secret hiding place, is a heartbreaking story. The author, who is married and wants to remain faithful to his wife, tells these stories for the sake of knowledge, and does not ever accept solicitations from the various available women around the world. I enjoyed reading the book on Kindle because some of the Eastern references could be easily looked up with the instant Kindle dictionary. Sadly, this applied to other words which I had forgotten the meanings of, but Mr. Theroux has an excellent and not pretentious vocabulary. In short I loved the book because it is specific in details about countries, has excellent stories and conveys a basic sense of the countries he visited.In reading the other reviews I saw that some people think he is a hypocrite for "riding the rails" and then calling a famous friend to chat with or arrange to give a talk. I am glad he took advantage of his contacts and I think it makes the book more interesting that he sometimes has translators available or someone to show him around, rather than just arrive and be at the mercy of a tour guide book. He has earned the right to show off a bit, but I think he keeps to the spirit of the original back packer he was back in the seventies. I am a fan. I rate it five stars.

Well known novelist (The Mosquito Coast) and travel writer (Dark Star Safari: Overland from Cairo to Capetown(see my review),The Great Railway Bazaar, and others) Paul Theroux writes of a meandering journey starting from Western Europe, mostly by train, counter-clockwise around Asia. Theroux had made this trip (with a few differences) in a previous book, The Great Railway Bazaar, 30 years ago.Theroux is one of the great living travel writers and is known for being opinionated and selective in his narratives. Theroux is anything but a disinterested observer. His books include frequent references to himself and are mostly about his interactions with various people in the places to which he has travelled. Theroux has his blind spots that show up and he has his flashes of insight in equal amounts. He does not try to be encyclopedic or even pretend to give contrary views. At times, this is irritating and high-handed - especially when he contradicts your own rigidly-held opinionated views. But isn't that why we read - To see places and situations through other's eyes and maybe even learn something new or think something different? So this opinionation is one of the motifs that drive Theroux's books and make them so interesting.Even so, Theroux has mellowed with age and a happy marriage and I found that even when disagreeing with him, Theroux didn't have as much of the old vindictiveness, with a few exceptions. One is a hard-to-understand belief that Communists were the good guys in the cold war. For example, he compares Stalin's repressions (killing millions and imprisoning millions) to Senator Joseph McCarthy trying to expose the extensive Soviet spy network entrenched in the US government. McCarthy never accused anyone without cause and wielded no power. I recommend Blacklisted by History: The Untold Story of Senator Joe McCarthy and His Fight Against America's Enemies for the current views on the tragic patriot Senator McCarthy. Theroux also has strange soft spots for Pol Pot and Ho Chi Minh - likewise mass murderers. Theroux apparently was a '60's protester and still carries some of these ridiculous beliefs. The Vietnam war came because Russia and China, via their puppet terrorist Ho, were intent on overthrowing South Vietnam via terror. Noted Author Bernard Fall records that the Communists assassinated 30 South Vietnamese officials like village chiefs and post-men daily for years - literally thousands of assassinations. Theroux conveniently ignores this as he notes the rare American atrocities.These 2 errors aside, I found the rest of the book incredibly entertaining and insightful. Importantly, Theroux travels alone so he can meet the locals and interact rather than commenting on his travel companion's idiosyncracies like so many others. Theroux covers Eastern Europe briefly and Turkey, several of the Stans and particularly India in more depth. Theroux dislikes India due to its squalor, greed, dense population and lack of compassion for the poor. He notes that the advancement of India consists of abusing the poor to provide cheap but educated labor for multi-national concerns.South-east Asia, Japan and Russia make up the rest of the book with occasional mentions of disliking China for the same reasons he dislikes India.Theroux often includes a bon mot that is as entertaining as it is illuminating. For example, "Hands that help are better than lips that pray" - a saying from an Indian savant - perfectly expresses Theroux's disdain for much of the religious missionary work that goes on in these benighted countries. Or when Theroux notes that the call-bank girls in India hate calling the Aussies because the men so often start asking the girls what they are wearing and turn the call into a free sex call. (Which sounds like the perfect way to respond to a spam call during dinner - Why didn't I ever think of that?)Theroux notes the evils in the places he visits and often juxtaposes them with evils in our own society, and I suspect that it is this that so unnerves many of his detractors.Overall an excellent, entertaining, thought-provoking book with a few quibbles as noted. Four stars, but not quite five.

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In 2006 Paul Theroux decided to revisit the places he wrote about in his bestselling 1973 travel book "The Great Railroad Bazaar". Since then, the world has changed and he has aged but he wanted to revisit some of the places he wrote about then and add a few new ones, such as Cambodia, which was closed to travelers at that time. And so, over the course of several months, he traveled, mostly by railroad, through eastern Europe, Turkey, India, Myanmar, Thailand, Singapore, Vietnam, Cambodia, Japan and Russia. Along the way he meets fellow passengers, local cabdrivers, hotel employees and other well known writers such as Orham Pamuk, Pico Iyer and Haruki Murakami. His observations are personal and very real.This book brought me right along with him. I felt I was right there in those sleeper compartments on the overnight trains, sharing the space with a wide variety of short-term traveling companions, each one leaving him with further insights into their cultures. It is this touch of humanity that brought his travels alive for me. I'll never forget the descriptions of poverty in India, the bleakness of eastern Europe, the brutal history of Cambodia and the differences between all of these places. I learned something new on every page and was completely caught up in the adventure of it all.I felt I really got to know the author too. Seeing the world though his eyes made me a companion to him on his travels. I learned a lot from this book which I found difficult to put down. Bravo for Paul Theroux and a big thank you to him for bringing me along on this wonderful trip!

Wonderful writer.

Another good book from the author.

If you like travelling by train then read on. Just as his earlier book -The Great Railway Bazaar- about the same route in 1970s did this book too leaves you with a "travelled" feeling. You too would get off Paul's train as I did on turning the last page.

This is again a really good and readable book by Paul Theroux, whom I deem to be one of the best contemporary travel writers. Although you can sometimes feel that the author is annoyed by certain fellow travellers, I still had the feeling that Theroux is getting a little milder with the years. He is, however, uneasy about the booming Asian superpowers: India is too crowded to be comfortable, and China is not worth travelling at all (which I feel is a little exaggerated). In any case, the mixture of places where hardly anybody travels for fun, like Turkmenistan, and touristy places like Thailand makes the book really vivid.Another aspect really worth reading is the contrasting of impressions of his first, classical train journey to (nearly) the same places in the 70's ( The Great Railway Bazaar: By Train Through Asia (Penguin Modern Classics)) with those of his actual journey, whether personal considerations or concerning his travel destinations.

Ever since I accidentally came across his work as a teenager in the mid-1990s, picking up a copy of his novel `My Other Life' at a book sale and being immediately drawn to its ambition and clarity of prose, Paul Theroux has been a hero of mine. His work has been an inspiration as I made my own way as an author and journalist, simultaneously delighting and depressing me - the former because he is so good, the latter because I doubt I will ever match his talent. Like a literary groupie I have read his every word, looking forward to each new release.While his novels are always enjoyable - and some, such as `The Mosquito Coast' and `Milroy The Magician' can be described modern classics - I believe it is the narrative non-fiction and travel writing that is the strongest in his long portfolio, the sort of work that maybe bestows greatness upon him as a writer. He is entertaining, incisive, funny; and writes with beautiful clarity, seemingly incapable of putting a dull word on the page. While I sometimes disagree with his portrayal of places I have myself visited, he always seems to capture the essence of a place in a certain time.Theroux's widely acknowledged travel classic is `The Great Railway Bazaar' his 1973 journey from London, through Europe and Asia and back again. It is a sort of journey without purpose or aim, a meditation on the wonders of rail. It is darkly funny, and tells of a world that no longer exists: Soviet Eastern Europe; Shahist Iran; an Afghanistan that is still on the hippy trail; war-riddled Vietnam; Communist Russia. So much has changed since then that it seemed inevitable that Theroux would eventually go back, and that he has done in `Ghost Train to the Eastern Star.'I found it instructive and entertaining to re-read his 1970s classic with the new volume to see for myself how the world had changed, but also how Theroux had evolved as a writer (less funny, more contemplative, less likely to jump to the hasty conclusions he criticises other writers for; still a charming, erudite and likeable guide).At 66 he is twice as old as when he embarked on The Great Railway Bazaar. The World has changed: He was refused a visa for Iran, told Afghanistan was too dangerous to visit; but he can stop en route in former-Soviet Republics, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan; visit North Vietnam; stop off on the Trans-Siberian route at Perm.As a reader these places seem less foreign or strange even than they did when I first read The Great Railway Bazaar in the 1990s. While his accounts are, perhaps, less revelatory he is still perceptive and entertaining. He delights in seeing countries `with their pants down' and seeks out red light districts, sex shops, dodgy bars and other dives. An encounter with a Ukrainian prostitute in Turkey is particularly heart-breaking in its sadness.Occasionally he interviews or meets up with other celebrated authors: Orhan Pamuk in Turkey, Haruki Murakami in Tokyo and the late Arthur C Clarke in Sri Lanka, the latter wearing a T-shirt saying, `I invented the satellite and all I got was this lousy T-shirt'. These add colour to his travels, but as pieces of journalism tacked on to the narrative they are marvelous and seem to transcend the ordinary literary interview. Perhaps this is because he finds his subjects in their natural arena.The Great Railway Bazaar is referred back to regularly. Theroux fills in some of the blank spaces of that trip: he was terribly home sick and aware of his wife having an extra-marital affair whilst he conducted that first trip, but this was ignored (for obvious reasons) in the first book (save for a dream he has on the Trans Siberian Express that hints at his wife's unhappiness and perhaps her vindictiveness too). At the same time, I felt by reading the two books concurrently I learnt more than he told me.Which brings me on to my principle niggle with Theroux, which is the sense, sometimes, that he isn't always being straight with the reader, that he is somehow playing games. He admits that a passage in The Great Railway Bazaar, where he met an aged hotel manager on a train, was largely fabricated (he transplanted the conversation to a train carriage to add to its dramatic appeal, he said) and you wonder where else he has been economical with the truth. Why is his second wife, Sheila Donnelly, referred to as Penelope? Is she really at home (in Hawaii) knitting? His first wife Anne is referenced often, but I don't think in any of his work he's ever mentioned his sons as adults, the novelist Marcel Theroux, and TV documentary maker and goofball, Louis. I think there's a side to Theroux which we will never see, unless his first wife - as has often been rumored - brings out her memoir of life with the writer.But all this is digression. Ghost Train to The Eastern Star is a wonderful travel book - lyrical, funny, meditative - and the best I've read in years. Possibly it is Theroux's greatest work. But don't read it on its own, though; read it with The Great Railway Bazaar, chapter by chapter and appreciate how the world, and Paul Theroux, have changed.