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Cargando... Ghost Train to the Eastern Star: On the Tracks of the Great Railway Bazaar (2008 original; edición 2009)por Paul Theroux
Información de la obraGhost Train to the Eastern Star: On the Tracks of the Great Railway Bazaar por Paul Theroux (2008)
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Inscríbete en LibraryThing para averiguar si este libro te gustará. Actualmente no hay Conversaciones sobre este libro. Just as soon as I finish The Tourist and The House and Its Head (book club), I get to read Theroux. Theroux first made this journey in 1973, thirty-three years earlier. He was eager to make comparisons as he followed the old travel itinerary of The Great Railway Bazaar (with a few exceptions like skirting Iran and Pakistan and being able to enter Cambodia as it was no longer controlled by the Khmer Rouge, for examples). Retracing his own steps affords Theroux the ability to look up hotels he previously visited and people he met thirty-three years ago. He is pleasantly surprised when they remember him and dismayed to learn others thought him a pompous jerk on his first visit. In addition to writing about a journey, readers get a glimpse of Theroux's personality. I found it curious that he doesn't like people eating and walking at the same time (no street fairs for him). By 2006 he hasn't wanted to learn the lesson of his first marriage - it is self-indulgent to travel for four months, leaving a wife and/or family behind. The family sees this extravagance as abandonment. (Although the second wife was wiser thanks to technology. She demanded Theroux take a smart phone.) My favorite part of Ghost Train was Theroux's conversation with Haruki Murakami about his first marriage. It felt like an honest, soul-exposing confession. The real Theroux came out, author to author. Theroux also gauges a country's cultural acceptance by their use of pornography. As the book goes on, Theroux's running commentary on the varying sex trades increases. In terms of idioms, I felt Theroux was overly negative in his descriptions of towns: acid, broken, beleaguered, cruel, crummy, crumbling, dirty, dim, dark, derelict, dreary, dilapidated, disorder, desperate, decaying, fatigued, foul, filthy, gloomy, lifeless, muddy, miserable, melancholy, mournful, nightmare, neglected, poisonous, primitive, pockmarked, rust-stained, ramshackle, ragged, smoky, sticky, shadowy, stale, stink, stinky, sooty, tough, threadbare, unfriendly, ugly, wrecked, wasteland to name a few. But, as another aside, I love authors who use the word hinterland. Don't ask me why. I think it's a very romantic word. Enjoyable, though less so than, say, Riding the Iron Rooster. I must say, though, after reading a few of his books, Theroux seems *obsessed* with prostitutes. I may know a little more about the countries he passes through, but I am guaranteed to know what the prostitutes were like. Though he says he doesn't partake. That said, I wonder if he doth protest too much... A book about travelling, where Paul Theroux wonders about travellers and particularly travel writers and he takes a journey that lasts months trying to follow in his own footsteps from the The Great Railway Bazaar. Because of changes in the world's conflicts he goes to different countries some of the time. He dwells on some countries more than others and is more outward looking in some places compared to others, or is able to be more outward looking. I don't always agree with Paul Theroux but he is always fascinating and his insights are always useful. He is human and owns up to many of his own failings as he travels. The places are fascinating. It is now over 15 years since he made the trip and things have changed yet again but for the moment in time glimpse at these countries and the people he meets this is a must read for anyone who loves to travel.
It’s the kind of project that only a man secure in his own self-esteem could undertake: an auto-pilgrimage, a grand homme’s homage to, well, himself. But then Theroux has never been overburdened by modesty. Although he has claimed that a prerequisite of traveling responsibly is avoiding arrogance, his previous travelogues have all been pungent with self-regard. “Ghost Train” is no different. He also keeps up a running argument with the books he reads along the way, to say nothing of his contemporaries (Chatwin never traveled alone, he harrumphs, and neither does bête noire Naipaul). Fans of Theroux will say that he hasn’t lost his touch; the more critical will say that he breaks no new ground. Either way, worth looking into. PremiosDistinciones
In Ghost Train to the Eastern Star, Theroux recreates an epic journey he took thirty years ago, a giant loop by train (mostly) through Eastern Europe, Turkey, the Caucasus, Central Asia, the Indian Subcontinent, China, Japan, and Siberia. In short, he traverses all of Asia top to bottom, and end to end. In the three decades since he first travelled this route, Asia has undergone phenomenal change. The Soviet Union has collapsed, China has risen, India booms, Burma slowly smothers, and Vietnam prospers despite the havoc unleashed upon it the last time Theroux passed through. He witnesses all this and more in a 25,000 mile journey, travelling as the locals do, by train, car, bus, and foot, providing his penetrating observations on the changes these countries have undergone.--From publisher description. No se han encontrado descripciones de biblioteca. |
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Google Books — Cargando... GénerosSistema Decimal Melvil (DDC)915.04425092History and Geography Geography and Travel Geography of and travel in Asia Special TopicsClasificación de la Biblioteca del CongresoValoraciónPromedio:
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