Author: Paul Theroux ★★★★

Continuing to find new destinations and
fresh ways of describing them can be
a real problem for travel writers. However,
this is a challenge Paul Theroux tackles head
on in Ghost Train to the Eastern Star. As he
retraces the journey he made three decades
earlier for his classic The Great Railway
Bazaar, the veteran author is desperate to
avoid "the tedious reminisces of better days,
the twittering of the nostalgia bore". Thanks
to his skill as a writer, he manages to avoid
these potential pitfalls in style.
Although it follows in The Great Railway
Bazaar's tracks, Ghost Train's route is not exactly the same. Iran
and Afghanistan, for instance, have been replaced with new (and
less dangerous) possibilities such as Azerbaijan and Uzbekistan.
However, whether Theroux is returning to a destination or visiting it
for the first time, the world has changed, and the influences of globalization
and geopolitics continue to rear their heads. The American
repeatedly encounters people with ambivalent feelings towards his
country, and their own, and as he travels east, he meets many who

are fleeing in the opposite direction in search of new lives.
The traveller has, of course, changed too. Throughout Ghost
Train, the 67-year-old reflects on his younger self, and the miserable-
sounding voyage he made all those years ago; a trip he returned
from to find his domestic life in tatters. Theroux knows
that it sounds like a cliché to describe himself as older and wiser,
but it's also true – a fact that contributes to some of the great
strengths of his new book, as well as some of its less palatable
moments.
Theroux's conviction in his mastery of travel writing means that
alongside perceptive insights into the art and ethics of his craft,
the author sometimes reverts to the kind of laziness he's just been
criticising. He is self-aware and skilful enough to get away with
this most of the time, but the air of arrogance is reinforced by the
rudeness and condescension he directs at some of the people and
places he encounters. Not being entirely complimentary about literary
heavyweight V.S. Naipaul is one thing, but when he's scathing
about the "little people" he meets on his journey it often feels
rather mean-spirited.
Still, despite some uncomfortable moments which will reinforce
the image some have of him as a misanthrope, Theroux's
honesty is generally very refreshing – especially when compared
to the relentlessly-positive advertorials that so often pass as travel
writing. Memories, political musings and literary digressions are
masterfully combined with vivid sketches of intriguing people
and places in Ghost Train to the Eastern Star, and with this book
Theroux will make many readers want to pack their bags and take
the next train out of town.