Ghost Train to the Eastern Star: On the Tracks of ‘The Great Railway Bazaar’
By Paul Theroux
Hamish Hamilton £20, 496 pages
FT Bookshop price: £16
Ghost Train to the Eastern Star, Paul Theroux’s latest book, begins with an apology. The journey it describes – a long loop by train between England and Japan – repeats that of his earlier book, The Great Railway Bazaar (1975), and Theroux is disappointed by his own lack of imagination. “What traveller backtracked to take the great trip again?” he ponders, and then answers candidly: “None of the good ones that I know.” He lists them: Greene, Conrad, Newby, Raban, Morris, Byron ... “So much for some of my favourite authors.”
