The book is an account of a journey through Europe and Asia by train. The concept is good, and the author made a great journey, and has the gift of story telling. But the author himself comes across as a stupid, rude and horrible person who abuses random people, makes snide remarks, plays practical jokes on helpful locals, and in general appears quite slap-worthy.

He mostly behaves himself in the first half of the book, but on reaching Japan, he becomes a perfect pest. Giving away gifts that wou More...

From my February 5, 2007 blog
http://blogs.sun.com/katysblog/entry/...

The Great Railway Bazaar (by Paul Theroux)

I finished one book on the drive home and had to go to Border's for a new book to get me through dinner. I thus interrupted my current naval reading theme with the quick read of a famous and excellent travel book: The Great Railway Bazaar: by train through Asia by Paul Theroux (ISBN-10: 0618658947, originally published in 1975).

My husband and I have a work trip to Bangalore later this m More...

I love Paul Theroux and this, one his first is the one which set me off. I wanted to re-read it before reading his new book about taking the same trip across Europe and Asia some thirty years later.
In the early 70s which he writes about in this book there were no railways in Afghanistan and I'm pretty sure railways aren't a priority to this day but I'm looking forward to seeing how he crosses the country in the middle of the first decade of the 2000s.
Theroux is an author one either loves or hate More...

I dont think this book is entirely memorable in anyway, although I think it was really good at capturing the feeling of traveling (for travel nerds,anyway). while reading it I got the sense of the sort of vacant yet full-of-possibilities feeling that comes from directionless travel. this is an experience I value almost as much as the destination itself, because when else can you feel so unattached and unburdened as when your sole responsibility is to make it to some arbitrary destination in some More...

oh dear, yes, he's observant and turns a pretty phrase on every page, makes you laugh, etc. but he's so contemptuous of everyone he comes across i lost interest. skipped all the trains between india and the soviet union. he really loses it at the end and addresses all the russians he meets on the trans siberian railway as monkeys. granted, i have now been in a similar situation, far from home in bleak surroundings at christmastime, like theroux on the trans siberian, homesick and irritated by ev More...

This probably should have five stars. It is gritty, meaty and pure Theroux. Apart from a hopeful start, there is nothing of the romance of travel except for one passage where, in Vietnam, the exquisite beauty of mountains, sky and ocean move the author to lyrical description. Rather, it is a chronicle of torrid conditions on overcrowded third-class carriages crammed with desperate humanity eating unspeakable food, alternated with, less frequently, weird fellow travellers sharing luxurious old co More...

Less a travel book and more a book about the physical act of travelling. Theroux has a refreshing lack of romance about the journey and the places he visits; most places are dirty, dull, unbearably hot or cold, and full of locals whose sole aim seems to be to rip him off. And although Theroux seems to enjoy very few of his stopovers, he feels compelled to travel and to sample these places. And as the book progresses, you feel the main aspect of the book change from a simple travel book to a more More...

The novelist and travel writer rides by train from France to Turkey (via the now-shabby Orient Express), through Pakistan, India, Thailand, Vietnam, Japan, Siberia, and back. This is an excellent read both for train lovers (whom the exotic trains Theroux rides will captivate) as well as readers who enjoy travelogues. To be fair, this is less a travelogue than a series of vignettes covering Theroux's journeys through various Asian countries. Theroux makes no attempt to develop an understanding of More...

When, some thirty years later, Paul Theroux repeated the journey that he had described in The Great Railway Bazaar, he declared travel writing to be ‘the lowest form of literary self-indulgence.’ His original journey in the early 1970s was a deliberate act, a ruse upon which to hang a book. The travel featured was nothing less than an occupation, whose sole product was to be collected and recorded experience. We, the readers, must thank him for his single-minded devotion to selfishness, for The More...

Writer Paul Theroux goes on a rail journey that must be at least five times longer than the one I just completed. He starts in London and travels through Europe, Turkey, the Middle East, India, China, Japan and Russia. I disagree with Theroux's travel style, which seems to consist of taking the train just for the sake of taking the train. He spends little time in cities and towns along the route and spends most of the book describing the trains themselves and the people that ride them.

The best t More...

First of all it's old and it takes some adjustment to get back into the mindset of 1975. When Theroux traveled to Vietnam the war wasn't over (he was horrified to discover entrepreneurs setting up battlefield tours) and when he went from the Soviet Far East to Moscow, it was still the USSR. In fact, that last part of the trip, when he traveled from northern Japan to the USSR in the winter, was the worst part of the book and not only because it was an old story politically. Theroux was also tired More...

I read the sequel to this book, Ghost Train to the Eastern Star, a couple years ago and wanted to see what the original was like. In The Great Railway Bazaar Theroux travels by train in 1975 across southern Asia, Japan, and back by way of the (then Soviet) trans-Siberian express. As in the sequel, many of the places he travels through seem perfectly awful and only reinforce my conviction that I will never go there myself (India, Sri Lanka, Afghanistan, Iran, Siberia, etc.). Much has changed sinc More...

This is one of the first "travel books" I can recall ever reading. I definitely plan to look for more as I very much enjoyed it. You definitely can tell that Theroux' misanthropic personality colors a lot of what he sees and does, but that is okay. It is part of the journey and I wouldn't want to change it if it meant more bland writing. It is crazy to think how much the world has changed in the few short decades since he took his trip. Though some of the parts still remind me a bit of my own ti More...

Whereas this appears on the surface to be the story of one man taking trains around Asia, it is more an exploration of Theroux's own internal wanderlust. It is also fascinating to today's readers since it was written in 1975 and so much has changed since then, though perhaps most insistent is the fact that so much has not.

It is a source of some head-scratching that Theroux generally eschews the investigation of any of the places he travels through, no matter how fascinating they may be. He has c More...

The Great Railway Bazaar, by Paul Theroux, narrated by Frank Muller, produced by Recorded Books, downloaded from audible.com.

This book recounts a railway trip from London, and back to London, through Asia and Russia. The train trip takes four months and was accomplished in 1975. Theroux apparently kept a detailed journal of everything that happened on the trip. He is known as a travel writer. He describes the scenery, sometimes in fairly unappetizing detail, the food he ate and saw other eat, ag More...

Allright, so I'm in the middle of the book so far, but so far my reactions, both positive and negative have been quite strong. Theroux's unabashed narrowness of mind (I guess 'misanthropic' would be a nicer way of saying that he's kind of an asshole) combined with sweeping statements like, "Afghans are lazy, idle, and violent" (87 in my 1979 Penguin edition) piss me off! I keep setting the book down in a huff, but his writing is so good that I find myself coming back to it a few days later.

The More...

Just so we're clear from the beginning, Paul Theroux is a dick. Or a misanthrope or whatever else you want to call him. Now that we've got that behind us, this is one of the best books (and especially best travelogues) I have read. Written in 1975, Theroux traveled for four months by train from London across Europe, the Middle East, India, Southeast Asia to Japan, and then back to London along the 6000 mile Trans Siberian Railway. Theroux managed by luck to be in Iran just before the Shah fall, More...

I definitely enjoyed this book, but I can't say that I loved it. Largely, I believe this is because of the different world views of the author and I, the eternal optimist. Theroux's writing is clever, concise and easy to devour, but in this travel book, he is bounded by his negativity. I've read a bit about the author's life and his departure for this trip eventually contributed to his divorce and the trip itself is clearly colored in anxiety, despite his efforts to mask it (particularly at the More...

I love Theroux's rambling architecture. It's a frantic bit of Dylan Thomas-like prose, touching here and moving to the next before any significant revelation has sunk in. He's definitely someone I want to read but he's not someone I want sharing my train compartment for 6,000 miles across the Soviet Union.

On one hand, this barely seems like travel lit to me. It is about travelers more than locales - his description of the many stops along the path are brief interludes to break up the conversatio More...

“Ever since childhood, when I lived within earshot of the Boston and Maine, I have seldom heard a train go by and not wished I was on it.”

These are the first words of this marvelous travel book. In 1975, just after the fall of Saigon, Theroux decides to board a train in London and take it to Japan, by a southerly route and come back west, via the Trans-Siberian. He not only rides on some fascinating trains, like the Orient Express, the Khyber Pass Local and the Mandalay Express, he stops over in More...

Ever since childhood, when I lived within earshot of the Boston and Maine, I have seldom heard a train go by and not wished I was on it. Those whistles sing bewitchment: railways are irresistible bazaars, snaking along perfectly level no matter what the landscape, improving your mood with speed, and never upsetting your drink. The train can reassure you in awful places—a far cry from the anxious seats of doom airplanes inspire, or the nauseating gas-sickness of the long-distance bus, or the para More...

i learned that this author does not find europe very interesting. i learned that this author seemed to have enjoyed india and bits of se asia, but did not like japan. i learned that he thinks trains are rad. i will tend to agree, however, i have not had the opportunity of hardcore trainage such as this and would like, but perhaps the world is a bit unstable at the moment.

"The farther one traveled, the nakeder one got, until, towards the end, ceasing to be animated by any one scene, one was most More...

I expected more from a book this popular. It has turned out to be an unfortunate choice for my first ever book on travel.

The writing is undistinguished and the book is composed almost entirely of the author’s mean impressions of everyone and every place he comes across. I always look for memorable sentences in a book and am unhappy to report that I can think of only two. He undoubtedly thinks himself superior to all the people he meets and proceeds to make fun of most of them in an unkind manner More...

Three stars. In some ways I feel unkind to Paul Theroux, but when I think of the books I've given 4 stars to they have entertained me far more or engaged me better. This book is undeniably well written and Theroux is an observant and entertaining chronicler of human behaviour and culture. I found parts of it much more interesting than other parts and at times wanted to put the book down for rather longer. He is better at describing people and their amusing conversations than making the long desc More...

Across Europe and through Asia in the mid seventies! Now that's what you call travel - time travel for the reader. The journey begins in London, and after a bleak journey on the Trans Siberian express, ends there as well. There are thirty trains in this amazing chronicle, and they are as much about the travel experiences as they are about the culture of the age and the milieu of the countries they pass through.
There are some excellent quotes I could identify with too eg. One always begins to for More...

A sarcastic, cynical guy from Massachusetts who likes riding on trains? Wow, that sounds oddly familiar.
The author hopped on a train in London and took trains where possible through Europe, Turkey, Iran, Pakistan, India, Ceylon, Burma, Thailand, Laos, Malaysia, Singapore, Vietnam, Japan, and Russia (I hope I didn't forget anywhere). He writes about what he sees and how each culture is reflected in its train network and stations. For example, Japan's trains were fast, clean, quiet, and stopped at More...

Drop whatever you are doing. Run to your local bookstore. Head to the travel section and pick up The Great Railway Bazaar. If they don't have it, scream at the person behind the counter for being insolent and then go to another store.

Paul Theroux autographed my copy at a recent conference I attended. I didn't know much of him before the conference, so I didn't really know enough to ask him anything. Now I wish I had bought him a beer (or 12) and asked him: How could you leave your wife and kids More...

The volume that blew the starting whistle on Theroux's peregrinations remains the best of his I have read (not 'his best book' as some curly haired types would claim) - what's to dislike about a 4 month train journey from London to Japan and back? Especially as it's a trip that would, if anything, be even harder to undertake today - the author traverses Burma and Iran among other exotic destinations.

The warts and all descriptions were new at the time given audiences were used to a diet of Blue G More...

One dark day in the early 1970’s, at a loss for what to write next, novelist Paul Theroux boarded a train in London and set out on the longest continuous rail journey he could map. The story of his trip from Britain through Europe to India and Sri Lanka, across Southeast Asia, up Japan, and full circle back to England on the Trans-Siberian Express became an immediate best seller and catapulted the author into the literary big leagues.

That first book was pivotal because it introduced extensive di More...

The Popular Penguin series means that I’m always finding a new genre or author to try. This book is no exception – a railway journey from London to Asia and back through the USSR in the 1970s appealed to my love of Michael Palin’s travel books. Unlike Palin though, Theroux has no camera crew, just him and leaves his family for a solo tour. He does fly some of the time when there’s no other option, but the majority of the travel is taken on a variety of railway cars – from the old and dilapidated More...