Paul Theroux's highly acclaimed novels include Blinding Light, Hotel Honolulu, My Other Life, Kowloon Tong, and The Mosquito Coast. His renowned travel books include Ghost Train to the Eastern Star, Dark Star Safari, Riding the Iron Rooster, The Great Railway Bazaar, The Old Patagonian Express, and The Happy Isles of Oceania. He lives in Hawaii and on Cape Cod.
The pillars of Theroux's (The Happy Isles of Oceania, LJ 5/15/92) latest travel title are at the mouth of the Mediterranean, and he proposes to travel from one to the other the long way, by following the shoreline from Spain to Morocco using rail, ferry, bus, or car. One of the pleasures of his book is the unhurried nature of the trip. If it takes Theroux two years to appreciate the flavor of the Mediterranean, then that's how long it takes. As with his other books, Theroux disdains the tourist destinations (he refers to the Greek islands as theme parks) as well as many other sites that don't strike his persnickety fancy, but the Mediterranean is full of resorts and cultural sites so he often endures these to get to the places he finds worthwhile, like Aliano, Italy, Albania, and war-torn Croatia. Every public library should have a copy of this book; there will be a big demand for it.-Mary Ann Parker, California Dept. of Water Resources Law Lib., Sacramento
The difference between a tourist and a traveler, says Theroux, is that the tourist knows where he's going. Theroux (The Great Railway Bazaar), a traveler, as half a dozen of his popular books have attested, had no design for this adventure, no advance ticketing nor any commitment to stay or go anywhere. His only aim was to explore the Mediterranean coast without resort to airplanes. As a result, he found himself in unfamiliar villages on untraveled roads, acquired unexpected companions and slept in an assortment of inns, from fleabags to Hilton hotels, in Gibraltar Spain, the Riviera, Croatia, Sardinia, Greece, Albania, Morocco, the Levant and Israel. His pictures, like those of a wanderer with a sharp eye and an informed intelligence, though a large measure of condescension as well, are fresh even when he lands in well-reported places. Although most of his informants are casually met, now and then he interviews the famous, among them Paul Bowles in Morocco, Naguib Mahfouz in Egypt. This is a Mediterranean coast few know, as exotic and tumultuous now as throughout history. (Oct.)
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