The Great Railway Bazaar Author: | Language: English | ISBN:
B004EIGUPI | Format: EPUB
The Great Railway Bazaar Description
The Great Railway Bazaar is Paul Theroux's account of his epic journey by rail through Asia. Filled with evocative names of legendary train routes - the Direct-Orient Express, the Khyber Pass Local, the Delhi Mail from Jaipur, the Golden Arrow to Kuala Lumpur, the Hikari Super Express to Kyoto, and the Trans-Siberian Express - it describes the many places, cultures, sights, and sounds he experienced and the fascinating people he met.
Here he overhears snippets of chat and occasional monologues, and is drawn into conversation with fellow passengers, from Molesworth, a British theatrical agent, and Sadik, a shabby Turkish tycoon, while avoiding the forceful approaches of pimps and drug dealers. This wonderfully entertaining travelogue pays loving tribute to the romantic joys of railways and train travel.
- Audible Audio Edition
- Listening Length: 10 hours and 56 minutes
- Program Type: Audiobook
- Version: Unabridged
- Publisher: Whole Story Audiobooks
- Audible.com Release Date: October 7, 2010
- Whispersync for Voice: Ready
- Language: English
- ASIN: B004EIGUPI
I recently re-read Theroux's Great Railway Bazaar and immediately was awash in memories of innumerable train journeys across the length and breadth of my native India. This is an excellent read both for train lovers (whom the exotic trains Theroux rides will captivate) as well as readers who enjoy travelogues. To be fair, this is less a travelogue than a series of vignettes covering Theroux's journeys through various Asian countries. Theroux makes no attempt to develop an understanding of the cultures he travels through but is content to describe the train itself along with a handful of anecdotes about the people he meets on each leg of his journey. Fair enough, this is not after all a sociological text but a travel diary of sorts.
And it is in description that Theroux's strength lies. He has the ability to make an anecdote seem so real as to make the reader a part of the scene. The pace of the book varies with the stop and start of each journey and I guess every reader will prefer some parts to others. Plus of course, it is a bit jarring when one reads this book today, since the tide of history has greatly changed many of the countries Theroux traversed. Still, culture is slower to change than politics and that keeps much of the book relevant even today.
By David Rasquinha
This fabulous account of getting on the train in London and riding trains (including the decrepit Orient Express) through Europe, across Asia as far east as Japan, then looping back to Europe on the Trans-Siberian, is not a bit dated, even though it was first published in 1975. Theroux is sometimes cross and prickly, but he doesn't miss a thing, and he ventures into places (and eats things) that most people never would. Because he is also a novelist, he's deft at limning the appearances and characters of the people he meets, and these people, who are variously vain, odd, smelly, crazy, foolish, bigoted, or just eccentric, give this travelogue--and indeed all of Theroux's travel narratives--the quality of a Dickens novel.
I've read and enjoyed several of his other rail narratives, including "The Old Patagonian Express" (Central and South America) , "Kingdom by the Sea" (United Kingdom), and "Dark Star Safari" (Africa). I'd start with this one, though, with its wonderful section on Vietnam in the last year of the war and its melancholy voyage across Leonid Brezhnev's sclerotic Soviet Union. As with all good books, it will transport you to places you did not know existed, even in this era of Google Earth. As for those who don't care for Theroux's sometimes cranky persona, well, there are always the twittering ecstasies of Peter Mayle ("A Year in Provence," etc.) or--worse--Frances Mayes ("Under the Tuscan Sun," etc.). Theroux's sojourns will never inspire busloads of tourists or the astronomical appreciation of the local real estate. Once you've read "The Great Railway Bazaar," be sure to follow it up with "Ghost Train to the Eastern Star," his recent (2009) account of his retracing (with some new stops) of the trip he took in the seventies. It's equally compelling, and it illuminates the story of the first trip.
By M. Feldman
VINE VOICE
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