 | This article needs additional citations for verification .(June 2024) |
 | |
| Author | Paul Theroux |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Genre | Travel |
| Publisher | Houghton Mifflin |
Publication date | 2008 |
Ghost Train to the Eastern Star is a 2008 train travel book by Paul Theroux. [1]
In this book, he retraces some of the trip described in The Great Railway Bazaar . He travels from London, through Europe on the Orient Express and then through Turkey, Turkmenistan, India, Sri Lanka, Vietnam, and Japan before making his way home on the Trans-Siberian Railway. He realizes that what has really changed compared to his first trip is himself and not just the countries. Theroux was 33 years old at the time of the first book, and twice that age for the second trip. In his trip Theroux encounters beauty and kindness but also various troubling and dysfunctional countries, plagued by poverty, over-crowding, dictators and government control and oppression. This book is similar in concept to Dark Star Safari , his account of returning to see how Africa had changed, in the long interval since his time of living and working there while an early member of the Peace Corps. Theroux's travel coincides with the early part of the American invasion of Iraq. A previous book, The Happy Isles of Oceania , coincided with the First Gulf War. Theroux includes his experiences with people and their reaction to these wars in his work.
In the course of his travels, Theroux arranges meetings with several noteworthy figures of the literary scene. In Istanbul, Turkey, Theroux encounters writer and Nobel Prize in Literature recipient Orhan Pamuk. He also meets briefly with Elif Safak. In Sri Lanka, the science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke agrees to a visit from the author. Haruki Murakami, Japan's most widely read author, spends several days with Theroux, guiding him around various Japanese cities and landmarks. Before leaving Japan for Russia, Theroux explores the area around the city of Nara with Pico Iyer.
Paul Edward Theroux is an American novelist and travel writer who has written numerous books, including the travelogue The Great Railway Bazaar (1975). Some of his works of fiction have been adapted as feature films. He was awarded the 1981 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for his novel The Mosquito Coast, which was adapted for the 1986 movie of the same name and the 2021 television series of the same name.
Hippie trail is the name given to an overland journey taken by members of the hippie subculture and others from the mid-1950s to the late 1970s travelling from Europe and West Asia through South Asia via countries such as Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh to Thailand. The hippie trail was a form of alternative tourism, and one of the key elements was travelling as cheaply as possible, mainly to extend the length of time away from home. The term "hippie" became current in the mid-to-late 1960s; "beatnik" was the previous term from the later 1950s.
Batticaloa is a major city in the Eastern Province, Sri Lanka, and its former capital. It is the administrative capital of the Batticaloa District. The city is the seat of the Eastern University of Sri Lanka and is a major commercial centre. It is on the east coast, 111 kilometres (69 mi) south of Trincomalee, and is situated on an island. Pasikudah is a popular tourist destination situated 35 km (22 mi) northwest with beaches and flat year-round warm-water shallow-lagoons.
The genre of travel literature or travelogue encompasses outdoor literature, guide books, nature writing, and travel memoirs.
Josie Dew is an English touring cyclist, author and cook. Although a caterer by profession she frequently takes long cycle trips and then writes a humorous travelogue detailing her experiences. She lives near Portsmouth, England. She has two daughters and a son.
Pole to Pole with Michael Palin is an eight-part television BBC documentary travel series, first broadcast on BBC 1 in 1992, and presented by comedian and actor Michael Palin. The programme is the sequel to Around the World in 80 Days with Michael Palin, and was the second of Palin's major journeys, the series focusing on a journey along the 30-degree east line of longitude from the North Pole to the South Pole, sticking to using mainly cars, buses, trains and ships to make the 5-month journey, while travelling through northern and eastern Europe, and Africa; a last-minute change of plans led to the journey diverting through South America, in order to reach Antarctica.
Around the World in 80 Days with Michael Palin is a 7-part BBC television travel series first broadcast on BBC1 in 1989, and presented by comedian and actor Michael Palin. Inspired by Jules Verne's classic 1873 novel Around the World in Eighty Days, in which a character named Phileas Fogg accepts a wager to circumnavigate the globe in eighty days or less, Palin takes on the same task, prohibited from using aircraft in order to use a combination of trains, boats and other forms of transport, to take him across several countries around his circumnaviation of the world, including Italy, Egypt, China, Japan, and the United States.
Christopher Royston George Ellis, known as Royston Ellis, was an English novelist, travel writer and erstwhile beat poet.
The Great Railway Bazaar: By Train Through Asia is a travelogue by American novelist Paul Theroux, first published in 1975. It recounts Theroux's four-month journey by train in 1973 from London through Europe, the Middle East, the Indian subcontinent and Southeast Asia, and his return via the Trans-Siberian Railway. The first part of the route, to India, followed what was then known as the hippie trail. It is widely regarded as a classic in the genre of travel writing. It sold 1.5 million copies upon release.
This is a chronology of the early European exploration of Asia.
The Old Patagonian Express (1979) is a written account of a journey taken by novelist Paul Theroux. Starting out from his home town in Massachusetts, via Boston and Chicago, Theroux travels by train across the North American plains to Laredo, Texas. He then crosses the border and takes a train south through Mexico to Veracruz where he meets a woman looking for her long-lost lover. He then takes the train south into Guatemala and then El Salvador where he goes to a soccer match and is amazed by the violence. He then flies to Costa Rica where he takes the train to Limón and Puntarenas. He ended his transit of Central America in Panama where he takes the short train ride across the isthmus. Theroux then proceeds to Colombia and then over the Andes and finally reaches the small town of Esquel in Patagonia. He endures harsh climates, including the extreme altitude of Peru and the Bolivian Plateau, meets the author Jorge Luis Borges in Buenos Aires and is reunited with long lost family in Ecuador.
The Edward Stanford Travel Writing Awards celebrate the best travel writing and travel writers in the world. The awards include the Stanford Dolman Travel Book of the Year and the Edward Stanford Award for Outstanding Contribution to Travel Writing.
John Gimlette is an English author of travel literature. He has published six books to date; Panther Soup: A European Journey in War and Peace, Theatre Of Fish: Travels through Newfoundland and Labrador, At The Tomb Of The Inflatable Pig: Travels through ParaguayWild Coast: Travels on South America's Untamed Edge, Elephant Complex: Travels in Sri Lanka, and ‘’Garden of Mars: Madagascar, an Island Story.’’ Jorge Antonio Halke Arévalos is a character in “The Pig”. After the publication he was killed in a dispute in 2005.
Shehan Karunatilaka is a Sri Lankan writer. He grew up in Colombo, studied in New Zealand and has lived and worked in London, Amsterdam and Singapore. His 2010 debut novel Chinaman: The Legend of Pradeep Mathew won the Commonwealth Book Prize, the DSC Prize, the Gratiaen Prize and was adjudged the second greatest cricket book of all time by Wisden. His third novel The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida was announced as the winner of the 2022 Booker Prize on 17 October 2022.
Olivier Weber is a French writer, novelist and reporter at large, known primarily for his coverage of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. He has been a war correspondent for twenty-five years, especially in Central Asia, Africa, Middle-East and Iraq. He is an assistant professor at the Institut d'études politiques de Paris, president of the Prize Joseph Kessel and today ambassador of France at large. Weber has won several national and international awards of literature and journalism, in particular for his stories on Afghanistan and for his books on wars. His novels, travels writing books and essays have been translated in a dozen of languages.
List of works by or about Paul Theroux, American novelist, short story writer and travel writer.
Jack Whitehall: Travels with My Father is a travel documentary/road trip comedy television series that debuted on Netflix. The show is presented by comedian Jack Whitehall and his father, Michael Whitehall. The show covers the pair's travels to various places around the world, encountering silly and awkward situations.