Paul Theroux, The Great Railway Bazaar: By Train Through Asia Review

Overall Rating

It's a light-hearted factual, travel adventure story that has its humourous moments. Profundity it is not.

If there were dull passages, it is because the author is transiting dull places. The author is American (Anglicised). A cosmopolitan outlook is suggested.

Paul Theroux, The Great Railway Bazaar: By Train Through Asia is a book that is best read lounging on a sun bed under a palm tree on a hot, sandy beach overseas. It describes the places and the people the author visited and met whilst travelling by various trains from London's Victoria Station across Europe and India to the Far East; and his subsequent return via Russia. Anyone who has lived as an expatriate in Africa, the Middle East or the Far East will readily identify characters and locations. Nostalgic memories will abound.

His departure from England can only be described as dull, but anyone who has had to regularly commute on a dark, damp and dismal winter evening will testify that suburbia will never be at its best. The last part of the book was also uninteresting but this could be due to the author's travel fatigue at the end of a long and arduous journey. However, the bulk of the book was thoroughly enjoyable and well worth reading. If you are in need of a chortle, this is a read which should be on your shortlist.

The reviewer has at some time or other resided in London, Lagos, D sseldorf, Muscat, Hong Kong, Abu Dhabi and Umm Al Qaiwain.