Paul Theroux

A compendium of travel writing from a master traveller. Part philosophical guide, part miscellany, part reminiscence, it celebrates fifty years of wandering the globe by collecting the best writing on travel from the books that shaped the author, as a reader and a traveller.

The Last Train to Zona Verde is Paul Theroux's compelling account of his final African journey. Heading north from Cape Town, through South Africa, Namibia, Botswana and Angola, Paul Theroux makes a final journey along Africa's western edge. The end of the line is the Congo but Theroux discovers that his trip's pleasures are tempered by a growing sense that the Africa which so long ago helped form him has vanished, along with the hopes of many of its people. Yet after 2,500 miles Theroux finds that though this will be his ultimate African adventure there are still surprises to be found by the traveller prepared to step off the beaten track. "A melancholic, farewell journey...Theroux does all this inimitably, and more, getting better the more detours he takes". (Evening Standard). "Hard to put down, brutal honesty. Theroux proves himself a sharp observer of human foibles and a master of pithy description. The book he has crafted out of his experiences packs plenty of bang". (Spectator). "As we worry about the future of the continent, there could be no better guide than Theroux ...his sense that this is his final journey adds to the power". (GQ). "Excellent, barbed reportage". (Independent). "Probably the most important travel writer of his generation". (Sunday Times). Paul Theroux's books include Dark Star Safari, Ghost Train to the Eastern Star, Riding the Iron Rooster, The Great Railway Bazaar, The Elephanta Suite, A Dead Hand, The Tao of Travel and The Lower River. The Mosquito Coast and Dr Slaughter have both been made into successful films. Paul Theroux divides his time between Cape Cod and the Hawaiian islands.

A family watches, horrified, as their patriarch transforms into the wise-cracking lead of an old-timey minstrel show. An art collector gleefully destroys his most valuable pieces. A young artist devotes himself to a wealthy, malicious gossip, knowing that it's just a matter of time before she turns on him. In this new collection of short stories, Paul Theroux explores the tenuous leadership of the elite and the surprising revenge of the overlooked. He shows us humanity possessed, consumed by its own desires, always with his carefully honed eye and the subtle idiosyncrasies that bring his characters to life.

A darkly hilarious portrait of one dysfunctional American family and its scheming matriarch.Everyone in Cape Cod thinks that Mother is a wonderful woman: pious, hard-working, frugal. Everyone except her husband and seven children. To them she is a selfish and petty tyrant -- endlessly comparing her many living children to the one who died in childbirth, keeping a vice-like hold on her offspring even as they try to escape into adulthood.Welcome to Mother Land: a suffocating kingdom of parental narcissism. This is an engrossing, hilarious and heartbreaking portrait of a modern family -- the bickering, the conspiracies, and the drive to overcome the painful ties that bind.

Thirty years ago Paul Theroux left London and travelled across Asia and back again by train. His account of the journey - "The Great Railway Bazaar" - was a landmark book and made his name as the foremost travel writer of his generation. Now Theroux makes the trip all over again. Through Eastern Europe, India and Asia to discover the changes that have swept the continents, and also to learn what an old man will make of a young man''s journey. "Ghost Train to the Eastern Star" is a brilliant chronicle of change and an exploration of how travel is ''the saddest of pleasures''.

This startling, far-reaching book captures the tumult, ambition, hardship, and serenity that mark today''s India. Theroux''s portraits of people and places explode stereotypes to exhilarating effect.

Paul Theroux sets off for Cape Town from Cairo - the hard way. Travelling across bush and desert, down rivers and across lakes, and through country after country, he visits some of the beautiful and dangerous landscapes on earth. This book takes us on a journey of discovery and of rediscovery.