BookRags.com

Though I didn't read the edition indicated above--it was a 344-page paperback/softcover edition borrowed from my local library--I thought that Paul Theroux's 1975 travelogue debut was very interesting, at times hilarious and quite insightful. His chronicle of his four-month rail odyssey in late 1973 through the world's largest continent includes many destinations and experiences that one probably won't find in travel brochures. Each of the book's thirty chapters carries as its title one of the trains and destinations he rode, and he peppers the book with stories and his impressions of the people he met, and the food he ate, along the way. I was amazed that such a mammoth undertaking--some 15,000 miles (about 24,000 kilometers) on thirty-one trains--was even possible. Through it all Theroux reminds the reader that travel, with all its challenges, can be both broadening and limiting at the same time, and that after a long trip, it's great to be home.… (meer)