The Great Railway Bazaar

From renowned writer Paul Theroux comes a dazzling novel following a big-wave surfer in Hawaii as he confronts ageing, privilege and mortality<BR><BR>'It was as if in surfing he was carving his name in water, invisibly, joyously.'<BR><BR>Joe Sharkey knows he is passed his prime.<BR><BR>Now in his sixties, the younger surfers around the breaks on the north shore of Oahu still revere him as the once-legendary 'Shark', but his sponsors have moved on, and Joe wonders what new future awaits him on the horizon. Uninterrupted quality time with the ocean, he hopes.<BR><BR>Life has other plans.<BR><BR>When he accidentally hits and kills a man near Waimea while drunk-driving, he fears he will never rebound. Under the direction of his stubbornly loyal girlfriend Olive, he throws himself into uncovering his victim's story. But what they find in Max Mulgrave is entirely unexpected: a shared history - and refuge in the sea.<BR><BR>Set on the stunning Hawaiian coast, Theroux captures the glory and nostalgia of looking back at a rich and adventurous past, whilst learning to ride out life's next unexpected wave.<BR><BR>'[Paul Theroux's] writing skills are disciplined and muscular, his ear as finely tuned as a musician's, his eye sharper than any razor' Daily Mail

SUNDAY TIMES TOP TEN BESTSELLER<BR><BR>Winner of the Stanford Dolman Lifetime Contribution to Travel Writing Award 2020<BR><BR>Beloved travel writer Paul Theroux turns his attention to America, exploring the landscapes and communities of his homeland as an outsider for the first time<BR><BR>For the past fifty years, Paul Theroux has travelled to the far corners of the earth - to China, India, Africa, the Pacific Islands, South America, Russia, and elsewhere - and brought them to life in his cool, exacting prose. In Deep South he turns his gaze to a region much closer to his home.<BR><BR>Travelling through North and South Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee, Mississippi, Alabama and Arkansas, Paul Theroux writes of the stunning landscapes he discovers - the deserts, the mountains, the Mississippi - and above all, the lives of the people he meets.<BR><BR>The South is a place of contradictions. There is the warm, open spirit of the soul food cafes, found in every town, no matter how small. There is the ruined grandeur of numberless ghostly towns, long abandoned by the industries that built them. There are the state gun shows and the close-knit,subtly forlorn tribe of people who attend and run them. Deep in the heart of his native country, Theroux discovers a land more profoundly foreign than anything he has previously experienced.

«Mutterland zu lesen ist, als sähe man einem Autounfall in Zeitlupe zu. Es ist eine bösartige Abrechnung. Und es macht Spaß.» Stephen KingAlle in Cape Cod halten Mutter für eine wunderbare Frau: fleißig, fromm, genügsam. Alle außer ihrem Ehemann und ihre sieben Kinder. Für sie ist sie eine engstirnige und selbstsüchtige Tyrannin. Der Erzähler Jay, Reiseschriftsteller mittleren Alters, ist eines der sieben Kinder. Zusammen mit den Geschwistern findet er sich bei der Mutter ein, als der Vater stirbt - die erstickende Enge dort, im wortwörtlichen Mutterland, evoziert eine Bandbreite an Gefühlen, die dem Leser auf unheimliche Weise genau das präsentieren, was sonst immer nur der Horror der anderen ist.

Die Magie des Lesens - eingefangen in den Bildern des gefeierten Magnum-Fotografen. Jetzt als Sonderausgabe wieder erhältlich.Ein kurzer Moment der Ruhe inmitten des Chaos: Versunkenheit, Konzentration. Wenn Menschen lesen, verschwindet die Realität für kurze Zeit. In solchen magischen Augenblicken drückt Steve McCurry auf den Auslöser. Der weitgereiste Magnum-Fotograf hat die unterschiedlichsten Leser fotografiert: Kinder und Alte, Frauen und Männer, mit der Zeitung, dem Schulbuch oder einem Roman. Von Rom bis Kyoto, Marrakesch bis Los Angeles - überall auf der Welt lesen Menschen - lautet die schlichte wie überaus erfreuliche Nachricht. Bei diesem farbenfrohen Rundumschlag quer durch alle Kontinente überrascht und begeistert immer wieder McCurrys besonderer Blick für Details und Stimmungen, die anderen verborgen bleiben. Dieser Blick macht den seit 30 Jahren durch die Welt reisenden McCurry zu einem der renommiertesten lebenden Fotografen. Mit einer Einführung des berühmten Gegenwartsautors Paul Theroux.

Setting off in his hometown, and ending up 'almost at the end of the world', Paul Theroux's The Old Patagonian Express is a travel writing tour de force from one of the masters of the genre contains a new preface by the author in Penguin Modern Classics.<BR><BR>'The journey, not the arrival, matters'<BR><BR>The Old Patagonian Expresstells of Paul Theroux's train journey down the length of North and South America. Beginning on Boston's subway, he depicts a voyage from ice-bound Massachusetts to the arid plateau of Argentina's most southerly tip, via pretty Central American towns and the ancient Incan city of Macchu Pichu. Shivering and sweating by turns as the temperature and altitude rise and plummet, he describes the people he encountered - thrown in with the tedious, and unavoidable, Mr Thornberry in Limón and reading to the legendary blind writer, Jorge Luis Borges, in Buenos Aires. Witty, sharply observed and beautifully written, this is a richly evocative account of travelling to 'the end of the line'.<BR><BR>Paul Edward Theroux (b. 1941) is an American travel writer and novelist, born in Medford, Massachusetts. Among his best known works of travel-writing are The Great Railway Bazaar (1975), The Old Patagonian Express (1979), and Riding the Iron Rooster (1985). Theroux has published numerous works of fiction, some of which have been adapted into films, including The Mosquito Coast (1981), a 1986 film directed by Peter Weir and starring Harrison Ford and Helen Mirren. Theroux is the father of British documentary filmmaker Louis Theroux, and the uncle of American actor and screenwriter Justin Theroux.<BR><BR>If you enjoyed The Old Patagonian Express, you might like Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's Wind, Sand and Stars, also available in Penguin Modern Classics.<BR><BR>'One of the most entrancing travel books written in our time'<BR>Financial Times<BR><BR>'Travel writing at its most accomplished'<BR>Sunday Telegraph

A deliciously dark, atmospheric novel about family and brotherhood from one of America's most distinctive writers<BR><BR>There's sibling rivalry and then there's the relationship of brothers Cal and Frank Belanger.<BR><BR>Enemies since childhood, the small town of Littleford just isn't big enough to hold them both. So, Cal strikes out for the world's wild places - a gifted geologist in search of gold and other precious minerals - leaving Frank to develop a successful career as the town's lawyer, fixer and local hero.<BR><BR>But when Cal, newly rich and newlywed, returns to the town of his birth, Frank gives him the opposite of a brotherly welcome, leading to a series of betrayals and reprisals culminating in the ultimate plan: murder.<BR><BR>A riveting tale of adventure, betrayal and the true cost of family bonds, The Bad Angel Brothers is a remarkable novel from one of American's most distinctive writers.<BR><BR>'Laden with jealousy, betrayal and a mythic lust for vengeance' The New York Times<BR><BR>'One of the most accomplished and worldly-wise writers of his generation' The Times

Award-winning writer Paul Theroux tells a bewitching tale of circus magic and hypnotism which seems to hide a more sinister objective in his exquisite novel Millroy the Magician. Fourteen-year-old Jilly Farina walks into the tent at the County Fair and finds her life transformed. Fixing her with her hypnotic gaze Millroy the Magician performs astonishing miracles. When she is later magicked into his trailer and Millroy promised to train her as his assistant Jilly feels safe for the first time her her short life.But Millroy is more than a mere stage-show magician. A vegetarian and health fanatic a possessor of healing and hypnotic powers Millroy is on a mission to change the eating habits og an entire nation. And through Jilly he has found the strength to preach his evangelical message. With Millroy's messianic fervour ever growing Jilly begins to have doubts - but Millroy knows that without Jilly there will be no magic. . .'Brilliantly done. Theroux's best book for a very long time' Jonathan Raban The Times Literary Supplement 'Fresh and unexpected...among Theroux's best' Philip Hensher Guardian'Magical' Daily TelegraphAmerican travel writer Paul Theroux is known for the rich descriptions of people and places that is often streaked with his distinctive sense of irony; his novels and collected short stories My Other Life The Collected Stories My Secret History The Lower River The Stranger at the Palazzo d'Oro A Dead Hand The Elephanta Suite Saint Jack The Consul's File The Family Arsenal The Mosquito Coast and his works of non-fiction including the iconic The Great Railway Bazaar are available from Penguin.