To the Ends of the Earth

Zusatztext There are those who think that Paul Theroux is the finest travel writer working in English. This collection can only enhance that reputation. The New York Times Book Review Reads like a wonderful novel. The Pittsburgh Press Powerful . . . This compendium unequivocally offers insight into the mind of a foremost American fiction writer who became an accidental tourist. The Christian Science Monitor Theroux is a wonderful traveling companion. . . . To the Ends of the Earth combines the best of his travel writing. . . . With him the reader shares a conversation with a sultan on a polo ground in Malaysia; hears people 'mourn with firecrackers! scattering cherrybombs on the tombstone' in a Chinese cemetery in Singapore; feels overdressed around nudists in Corsica; sees sandbagged houses and bombcraters left in Vietnam on a cold December day in 1973. The Virginian-Pilot and The Ledger-Star Travel writing at its best . . . As you travel voyeuristically with Theroux! across the vast wastelands of interior China! the convoluted cultures of Latin America or campy seacoast towns of England! you're struck with his slightly jaundiced eye for the overlooked but telling detail! his skeptic's ear for the offhand but important comment. The Houston Post Informationen zum Autor Paul Theroux Klappentext "There are those who think that Paul Theroux is the finest travel writer working in English. This collection can only enhance that reputation."-The New York Times Book Review Author and travel writer Paul Theroux does what no one else can: he travels to the isolated, unusual, and fascinating spots of the world, and creates an elegy to them that makes readers feel they are traveling with him. Evocative, breathtaking, intriguing, here is the armchair traveler's guide to the sites of the world he makes us feel we know. Praise for To the Ends of the Earth "Reads like a wonderful novel."-The Pittsburgh Press "Powerful . . . This compendium unequivocally offers insight into the mind of a foremost American fiction writer who became an accidental tourist."-The Christian Science Monitor "Theroux is a wonderful traveling companion. . . . To the Ends of the Earth combines the best of his travel writing. . . . With him the reader shares a conversation with a sultan on a polo ground in Malaysia; hears people 'mourn with firecrackers, scattering cherrybombs on the tombstone' in a Chinese cemetery in Singapore; feels overdressed around nudists in Corsica; sees sandbagged houses and bombcraters left in Vietnam on a cold December day in 1973."-The Virginian-Pilot and The Ledger-Star "Travel writing at its best . . . As you travel voyeuristically with Theroux, across the vast wastelands of interior China, the convoluted cultures of Latin America or campy seacoast towns of England, you're struck with his slightly jaundiced eye for the overlooked but telling detail, his skeptic's ear for the offhand but important comment."-The Houston PostIntroduction I HAD BEEN TRAVELING FOR MORE THAN TEN YEARSIN EUROPE, Asia, and Africaand it had not occurred to me to write a travel book. I had always somewhat disliked travel books: they seemed self-indulgent, unfunny, and rather selective. I had the idea that the travel writer left a great deal out of his or her book and put all the wrong things in. I hated sight-seeing, and yet that was what constituted much of the travel writer's material: the pyramids, the Taj Mahal, the Vatican, the paintings here, the mosaics there. In an age of mass tourism, everyone set off to see the same things, and that was what travel writing seemed to be about. I am speaking of the 1960s and early 1970s. The travel book was a bore. A bore wrote it and a bore read itI could just imagine the sort of finger-wetting spud in carpet ...

ldquo;There are those who think that Paul Theroux is the finest travel writer working in English. This collection can only enhance that reputation.”—The New York Times Book Review

“Reads like a wonderful novel.”—*The Pittsburgh Press
*
“Powerful . . . This compendium unequivocally offers insight into the mind of a foremost American fiction writer who became an accidental tourist.”—*The Christian Science Monitor
*
“Theroux is a wonderful traveling companion. . . . To the Ends of the Earth combines the best of his travel writing. . . . With him the reader shares a conversation with a sultan on a polo ground in Malaysia; hears people ‘mourn with firecrackers, scattering cherrybombs on the tombstone’ in a Chinese cemetery in Singapore; feels overdressed around nudists in Corsica; sees sandbagged houses and bombcraters left in Vietnam on a cold December day in 1973.”—*The Virginian-Pilot and The Ledger-Star
*
“Travel writing at its best . . . As you travel voyeuristically with Theroux, across the vast wastelands of interior China, the convoluted cultures of Latin America or campy seacoast towns of England, you're struck with his slightly jaundiced eye for the overlooked but telling detail, his skeptic's ear for the offhand but important comment.”—The Houston Post

Auteur

Paul Theroux

Texte du rabat

"There are those who think that Paul Theroux is the finest travel writer working in English. This collection can only enhance that reputation."-The New York Times Book Review

Author and travel writer Paul Theroux does what no one else can: he travels to the isolated, unusual, and fascinating spots of the world, and creates an elegy to them that makes readers feel they are traveling with him. Evocative, breathtaking, intriguing, here is the armchair traveler's guide to the sites of the world he makes us feel we know.

Praise for To the Ends of the Earth

"Reads like a wonderful novel."-The Pittsburgh Press

"Powerful . . . This compendium unequivocally offers insight into the mind of a foremost American fiction writer who became an accidental tourist."-The Christian Science Monitor

"Theroux is a wonderful traveling companion. . . . To the Ends of the Earth combines the best of his travel writing. . . . With him the reader shares a conversation with a sultan on a polo ground in Malaysia; hears people 'mourn with firecrackers, scattering cherrybombs on the tombstone' in a Chinese cemetery in Singapore; feels overdressed around nudists in Corsica; sees sandbagged houses and bombcraters left in Vietnam on a cold December day in 1973."-The Virginian-Pilot and The Ledger-Star

"Travel writing at its best . . . As you travel voyeuristically with Theroux, across the vast wastelands of interior China, the convoluted cultures of Latin America or campy seacoast towns of England, you're struck with his slightly jaundiced eye for the overlooked but telling detail, his skeptic's ear for the offhand but important comment."-The Houston Post

Échantillon de lecture
Introduction
 
I HAD BEEN TRAVELING FOR MORE THAN TEN YEARS—IN EUROPE, Asia, and Africa—and it had not occurred to me to write a travel book. I had always somewhat disliked travel books: they seemed self-indulgent, unfunny, and rather selective. I had the idea that the travel writer left a great deal out of his or her book and put all the wrong things in. I hated sight-seeing, and yet that was what constituted much of the travel writer’s material: the pyramids, the Taj Mahal, the Vatican, the paintings here, the mosaics there. In an age of mass tourism, everyone set off to see the same things, and that was what travel writing seemed to be about. I am speaking of the 1960s and early 1970s.
 
The travel book was a bore. A bore wrote it and a bore read it—I could just imagine the sort of finger-wetting spud in carpet slippers who used his library card as bookmark, and called himself…