Ghost Train to the Eastern Star: On the Tracks of the Great Railway Bazaar | 
| Author: Paul Theroux
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Category: Book
List Price: $28.00
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Rating:  45 reviews
Sales Rank: 12010
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 512
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.6
Dimensions (in): 9.1 x 6.1 x 1.7
ISBN: 0618418873
Dewey Decimal Number: 915.04425092
EAN: 9780618418879
ASIN: 0618418873
Publication Date: August 18, 2008
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Amazon.com Review
Amazon Best of the Month, August 2008: Way back in the dark pre-Internet, limited-air-travel world of 1975, the way to get from Europe to Asia was by train. A young and ambitious writer named Paul Theroux made his literary mark by taking the 28,000-mile intercontinental journey via rail from London to Tokyo and back home again. His book, The Great Railway Bazaar, became a travel-lit classic. Thirty years later, an older, wiser, and even less sanguine Theroux decided to retrace his steps. The result is Ghost Train to the Eastern Star, a fascinating account of the places you vaguely knew existed (Tbilisi), probably won't ever go to (Bangalore), but definitely should know something about (Mandalay). Get on board Theroux's fast-moving travelogue, which features some of the most astute commentary on our distorted notions of time, space, and each other in the age of jet speed, broadband connections, and cultural extinction. --Lauren Nemroff
Product Description
Thirty years after the epic journey chronicled in his classic work The Great Railway Bazaar, the world's most acclaimed travel writer re-creates his 25,000-mile journey through eastern Europe, central Asia, the Indian subcontinent, China, Japan, and Siberia.
Half a lifetime ago, Paul Theroux virtually invented the modern travel narrative by recounting his grand tour by train through Asia. In the three decades since, the world he recorded in that book has undergone phenomenal change. The Soviet Union has collapsed and China has risen; India booms while Burma smothers under dictatorship; Vietnam flourishes in the aftermath of the havoc America was unleashing on it the last time Theroux passed through. And no one is better able to capture the texture, sights, smells, and sounds of that changing landscape than Theroux.
Theroux's odyssey takes him from eastern Europe, still hung-over from communism, through tense but thriving Turkey into the Caucasus, where Georgia limps back toward feudalism while its neighbor Azerbaijan revels in oil-fueled capitalism. Theroux is firsthand witness to it all, traveling as the locals do?by stifling train, rattletrap bus, illicit taxi, and mud-caked foot?encountering adventures only he could have: from the literary (sparring with the incisive Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk) to the dissolute (surviving a week-long bender on the Trans-Siberian Railroad). And wherever he goes, his omnivorous curiosity and unerring eye for detail never fail to inspire, enlighten, inform, and entertain.
PAUL THEROUX was born in Medford, Massachusetts, in 1941 and published his first novel, Waldo, in 1967. His fiction includes The Mosquito Coast, My Secret History, My Other Life, Kowloon Tong, Blinding Light, and most recently, The Elephanta Suite. His highly acclaimed travel books include Riding the Iron Rooster, The Great Railway Bazaar, The Old Patagonian Express, Fresh Air Fiend, and Dark Star Safari. He has been the guest editor of The Best American Travel Writing and is a frequent contributor to various magazines, including The New Yorker. He lives in Hawaii and on Cape Cod.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 40 more reviews...
Great nostalgia trip January 6, 2009
Theroux again follows sort of the same route he took in "The Great Railway Bazaar" some 30-odd years ago, and the results are even more interesting this time because he's matured and the sights are even more exotic. Theroux fans know what to expect from his "travel" tomes: i.e., not travelogues, but acute observations of human behavior and settings most of us will probably never visit. This will make you want to re-read the first book. Fans will have already devoured this, so any newcomers are urged to discover the curmudgeonly Theroux.
Asia by train: Part Two December 27, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
Well known novelist (The Mosquito Coast) and travel writer (Dark Star Safari: Overland from Cairo to Capetown(see my review),The Great Railway Bazaar, and others) Paul Theroux writes of a meandering journey starting from Western Europe, mostly by train, counter-clockwise around Asia. Theroux had made this trip (with a few differences) in a previous book, The Great Railway Bazaar, 30 years ago.
Theroux is one of the great living travel writers and is known for being opinionated and selective in his narratives. Theroux is anything but a disinterested observer. His books include frequent references to himself and are mostly about his interactions with various people in the places to which he has travelled. Theroux has his blind spots that show up and he has his flashes of insight in equal amounts. He does not try to be encyclopedic or even pretend to give contrary views. At times, this is irritating and high-handed - especially when he contradicts your own rigidly-held opinionated views. But isn't that why we read - To see places and situations through other's eyes and maybe even learn something new or think something different? So this opinionation is one of the motifs that drive Theroux's books and make them so interesting.
Even so, Theroux has mellowed with age and a happy marriage and I found that even when disagreeing with him, Theroux didn't have as much of the old vindictiveness, with a few exceptions. One is a hard-to-understand belief that Communists were the good guys in the cold war. For example, he compares Stalin's repressions (killing millions and imprisoning millions) to Senator Joseph McCarthy trying to expose the extensive Soviet spy network entrenched in the US government. McCarthy never accused anyone without cause and wielded no power. I recommend Blacklisted by History: The Untold Story of Senator Joe McCarthy and His Fight Against America's Enemies for the current views on the tragic patriot Senator McCarthy. Theroux also has strange soft spots for Pol Pot and Ho Chi Minh - likewise mass murderers. Theroux apparently was a '60's protester and still carries some of these ridiculous beliefs. The Vietnam war came because Russia and China, via their puppet terrorist Ho, were intent on overthrowing South Vietnam via terror. Noted Author Bernard Fall records that the Communists assassinated 30 South Vietnamese officials like village chiefs and post men for years. Theroux conveniently ignores this as he notes the rare American atrocities.
These 2 errors aside, I found the rest of the book incredibly entertaining and insightful. Importantly, Theroux travels alone so he can meet the locals and interact rather than commenting on his travel companion's idiosyncracies like so many others. Theroux covers Easter Europe briefly and Turkey, several of the Stans and particularly India in more depth. Theroux dislikes India due to its squalor, greed, dense population and lack of compassion for the poor. He notes that the advancement of India consists of abusing the poor to provide cheap but trained labor for multi-national concerns.
South-east Asia, Japan and Russia make up the rest of the book with occasional mentions of disliking China for the same reasons he dislikes India.
Theroux often includes a bon mot that is as entertaining as it is illuminating. For example, "Hands that help are better than lips that pray" - a saying from an Indian savant - perfectly expresses Theroux's disdain for much of the religious missionary work that goes on in these benighted countries. Or when Theroux notes that the call bank girls in India hate calling the Aussies because the men so often start asking the girls what they are wearing and turn the call into a free sex call. (Which sounds like the perfect way to respond to a spam call during dinner - Why didn't I ever think of that?)
Theroux notes the evils in the places he visits and often juxtaposes them with evils in our own society, and I suspect that it is this that so unnerves many of his detractors.
Overall an excellent, entertaining, thought-provoking book with a few quibbles as noted. Four stars, but not quite five.
 travel book December 22, 2008
I have read all of Paul Theroux's travel books and enjoyed everyone of them. I think this one is his best and I was disappointed when I got to the end. He manages to paint vivid pictures of the places to which he travels so that they come to life, for this reader anyway.
Paul is Back -- Cranky, Dyspeptic, Opinionated, Nosy, Thoughtful, Observant -- Just How I Like Him! December 17, 2008
Like Gore Vidal, I am a great fan of Paul's nonfiction works, while I am lukewarm at best to most of his fictional efforts. I guess what I love best about both authors is their voice -- that inescapable, unique interior framing, phrasing, and articulation -- that makes just about everything they do or write interesting to me. It's that first-person view of things that I just love from them.
This book is one of Paul's best -- a rumination on aging, memory, time, travel, and the world. Paul takes a journey few of us are capable of, and his powers of observation, and the wide-ranging knowledge he brings to his journey, make his insights utterly unique. He takes it mostly by train, in communal settings surrounded by people, in mostly uncomfortable trappings. He goes places I barely knew existed( the "'stans") and visits places I know much about but which are new to me in his eyes (Vietnam, Cambodia).
My only quibble is how quickly he wraps it all up -- I wanted him to spend as much time and depth in Japan or Russia as he did in places like Singapore or India. Alas, the book had to end sometime.
A superior entry in an already stellar collection.
 Don't waste your time or money... December 17, 2008
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
I was very excited about this book as I am generally a Theroux fan. If you're expecting a book where the author retraces his past trip and provides insight on how both He and the world have changed then I would suggest looking elsewhere.
There are a lot of things wrong with America both today and over the past many years, so I can forgive the overriding "America is Evil" theme. I can get past the constant social commentary on prostitution; It would seem that the only people he ever meets are prostitutes and authors. I can even forgive the incredibly boring conversations with his fellow authors.
But, when Theroux attempts to draw a moral parallel between a Stalinist Russia that killed an estimated 40 million people and McCarthyism of 1950's America that killed no one, imprisoned a few hundred and cost a few thousand people their livelihoods, that's where this "Train" goes off the tracks.
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