Rating: 
Summary: Theroux disappoints
Review: One long railway journey from England to Turkey to India to Japan to Russia and back to England passing through various countries along the way. If you like to read about lands and their people, this book is not for you. If you want to experience the customs of Asian countries, you should skip this book. In fact, if you expect anything other than a description of a railway journey, trains and a few co-passengers, you are bound to be disappointed. When you have finally convinced yourself that you are going to get nothing more out of this book other than trains and passengers, you can settle down to read it and find it fairly enjoyable. Paul Theroux describes some of the passengers characteristic of each country well, but omits describing some of the customs and traditions of the people themselves which would have made better reading, thereby loosing the 'travel' flavor I was expecting.
Rating: 
Summary: Travels with a curmudgeon
Review: One of the cardinal and unwritten rules of travel writing is that the writer should enjoy what he is doing; failing which, atleast attempt to give some insight into what he dislikes. In this book, Theroux does neither.
Most people in the third world do not see travel as a pastime as they do not have the means to engage in it for leisure. Facilites obviously cannot match those of the first world. Missing these simple points, Theroux comes across as insensitive and snobbish in his remarks. Though there is nothing wrong in pointing something that's lacking, there is no attempt at looking beyond the surface. In many chapters, you feel like asking 'ok, if this is so uncomfortable, why continue? why don't you take the next train home?'. In one ludicrous instance, he even complains about the name of a place!
To his credit though, the author has an immaculate writing style and you can finish the book in no time. Many of his passages describing the scenery are rich fodder for your imagination and you can make photographs in your mind from his descriptions. I just wish he had more openness to go with his undoubted skills.
Rating: 
Summary: It's the people that make the travelogue
Review: One of the off-putting things about traditional travelogues is the litany of thing-descriptions (buildings, markets, clothes, hills) which just don't make for compelling brain food. Theroux focusses on people, and more specifically personalities. As an Indian, I can say that he captures the essence of different ilks of Indians with an incisiveness that I have not seen in any other American writer. I wish I had gotten my red, white and blue wife to read this before we visited. Many of her questions are answered episodically. Questions such as Why are some Indians so free with information about their digestive state? Why is an ailment worn like a badge of honor by some? Why do Indian travel guides always mention how far a book store is from your hotel? Isn't it admirable that somebody of such high stature is so unassuming? The incomprehensible extremes of know-it-alls versus humility amongst those with great erudition..He makes equally astute observations about Afghans, Burmese, Ceylonese etc., but I'll leave you to read the book to enjoy these. Some may find this book insulting, as it is fairly blunt about the people's idiosyncrasies. I for one do not expect literature to be politically correct (and vice-versa).
Rating:
Summary: A Modern Classic.
Review: Reading this book is like taking a trip to the past. The first edition of the book was actually printed in 1974 & many countries have changed since. U.S.S.R is no longer a communist country, Iran is "liberated" by Khomeini, Afghanistan is ruled by the Talibans, Burma is better known as Myanmar, Vietnam is rebuilding itself from the aftermath of Vietnam War, India is jumping upon the bandwagon on Information Technology to catch up with the rest of the world, Pakistan has a nuclear capacity to match its neighbour(India)'s counterpart, & so forth. Then, there are countries which are evolving or remaining stagnant such as Ceylon (Sri Lanka) which still has a divided racial problem (thus, problem with the Tamil Tiger guerillas), Singapore is still fast-paced & skycrapers dominate the landscape, Thailand a place for misadventures, predictable Japan with almost all Japanese behave in an orderly fashion, & others. The author didn't write the book to capture the political scenes of the time but writing about the feel, the smell, the essence of the places that he came across. There's no better way to achieve the feat by getting acquainted with passengers & staff that he came across in the train, observing the state of the trains they were in, how time schedules were adhered by the train authorities, the cornucopia of people from all facets of society that gathered at the train station akin to a bazaar. To my antonishment, despite the book was almost 30 years old, characters of the people in their respective countries remain almost status quo & thus, reading this book now is as relevant as reading it 30 years ago. Paul's description of the landscape is vivid & his talent in absorbing the mannerisms & slangs of those places are uncanny. The book would be even more fun to read if he provided a glossary of explaining foreign words which he never elaborated further other than mentioning them briefly. For example, the usage of Singlish, that is the Singapore version of English which required the addition of -lah towards the end of sentences, and -lah itself doesn't have any meaning to it would only be known to people of those region & I wouldn't expect readers from Europe would be able to grasp with that. Paul seems to put a lot of effort in writing about the India continent & for readers who yearn to know more about India, William Darymple's books shouldn't be missed. Still, an enjoyable book to read & a worthy companion for travelling purpose. Highly recommended.
Rating:
Summary: Interesting, but anticlimatic
Review: The author's recollections of the people he's met on the train seem to be mostly about how much they annoy him, or how happy he is to finally get a compartment to himself. He also seems to have gotten tired of the whole business on the last half of his journey, his trip across the Soviet Union. It's compressed into just a couple chapters, and really doesn't have the interest of the rest of the book
Rating:
Summary: Travel writing for the truly adventurous
Review: The writer explores an unconventional region of the
world and develops his perceptions and feelings
towards his host countries by conveying
feelings about his immediate
environment - the insides of various trains
used to convey him across Asia.
Sharp insites into social, political,
and cultural aspects as gleened from
endlessly facinating descriptions of
fellow travelers encountered along the way.
I agree; he does lose some steam
at the end. But I think that's the reality of such
a long exhausting experience and,
ultimately, the author's point.
Rating: 
Summary: Travel, With Misanthrope
Review: Theroux lives up to his bad reputation in this, one of his earlier works. In case other readers are unaware, Theroux is the sort of person who is capable of going to the effort of writing a poison-pen book about an ex-friend of 30 years -- in this case, V.S. Naipaul. This (other) book is entitled Sir Vidia's Shadow (1998), and in it Theroux went to great effort to depict his old pal's ugliness, greed, and hypocrisy.
Expect all sorts of overwrought post-modern hysteria, drunkenness, and latent sadism in this book (two examples of these: a visit to a Japanese snuff film and a scene where Theroux shoves his way through a train station calling every misfortunate he meets 'Monkeys'.) Expect too to be exposed to some well-educated portraits which stimulate the mind and draw the imaginative sense into some scenes of intense clarity. These in themselves make the book worth it, especially if you like to draw pictures in your mind.
I personally find this sort of writing to be ultimately depressing because it is literary, educated, and imaginative -- and unredeemable. Theroux uses language to keep the reader at bay just as much as he does to pull him into his world. I checked this book out of the library instead of buying it. I'm glad I can return it to its shelf for another reader to taste.
Rating:
Summary: Obsolete and almost racist
Review: This book may have been a pleasant read when it appeared in the mid 70's, but today, it is definitely unsavory. The attitude of Mr. Theroux toward non-americans is that of a visitor at a zoo. Toward women, it is somewhat worse. The info. on the trains is poor. I read the book to daydream of a trip to Burma, and I hope the country would be more interesting than what Mr. Theroux described 25 years ago.
Rating:
Summary: Not bad at all
Review: This is a journal of a trip covering the major rail routes available in the 1970s across Europe and Asia. Theroux, an American, sets off from London on a tour where the journey itself was the goal. He wanted to sit back, observe, and absorb the atmosphere of the trains. In the book, he details his experiences on the trains, tells us about his fellow passengers, and describes what he was seeing out the windows while the trains wound across the tracks from Paris to Italy, Bulgaria to Turkey, Pakistan, India, Ceylon, Burma, Thailand, Malaysia, Vietnam, Japan, and the Soviet Union. Occasionally, he stopped for a night or two in a hotel along the way, and he also tells us of his adventures at these stops.It's been years since I read a book by Paul Theroux. In the past, I found his attitude a bit off-putting. There's something about deciding to write a travel book, then taking a trip for the specific purpose of having something to write about that makes the whole genre somewhat useless. But now that I have traveled a bit more myself and have visited many of the countries that Theroux describes here, I can appreciate the accuracy of his descriptions much more. In traveling through a country in a few days by train, no one would be able to make enough observations to make worthwhile analyses of the culture or the society of a country, but that's not Theroux's goal in this book. Instead, it is the journey itself that he is describing- -the focus is on the trains, and the particular subculture of train travel. Theroux provides us with images of the trains themselves and the people one meets on them as he describes his experiences of months spent living on the trains. Theroux's best descriptions are towards the beginning of the journey. By the end of the trip, he is reduced to a drunken stupor and his observations dwindle in the steppes of Siberia. The only reason for including his final chapters in the book are simply for the sake of completeness, to get him home again. The section on Vietnam is a remarkable snapshot of ordinary life trying to continue between the '73 ceasefire and the '75 withdrawal. It is images like these that give this book its enduring value.
Rating:
Summary: Not bad at all
Review: This is a journal of a trip covering the major rail routes available in the 1970s across Europe and Asia. Theroux, an American, sets off from London on a tour where the journey itself was the goal. He wanted to sit back, observe, and absorb the atmosphere of the trains. In the book, he details his experiences on the trains, tells us about his fellow passengers, and describes what he was seeing out the windows while the trains wound across the tracks from Paris to Italy, Bulgaria to Turkey, Pakistan, India, Ceylon, Burma, Thailand, Malaysia, Vietnam, Japan, and the Soviet Union. Occasionally, he stopped for a night or two in a hotel along the way, and he also tells us of his adventures at these stops. It's been years since I read a book by Paul Theroux. In the past, I found his attitude a bit off-putting. There's something about deciding to write a travel book, then taking a trip for the specific purpose of having something to write about that makes the whole genre somewhat useless. But now that I have traveled a bit more myself and have visited many of the countries that Theroux describes here, I can appreciate the accuracy of his descriptions much more. In traveling through a country in a few days by train, no one would be able to make enough observations to make worthwhile analyses of the culture or the society of a country, but that's not Theroux's goal in this book. Instead, it is the journey itself that he is describing- -the focus is on the trains, and the particular subculture of train travel. Theroux provides us with images of the trains themselves and the people one meets on them as he describes his experiences of months spent living on the trains. Theroux's best descriptions are towards the beginning of the journey. By the end of the trip, he is reduced to a drunken stupor and his observations dwindle in the steppes of Siberia. The only reason for including his final chapters in the book are simply for the sake of completeness, to get him home again. The section on Vietnam is a remarkable snapshot of ordinary life trying to continue between the '73 ceasefire and the '75 withdrawal. It is images like these that give this book its enduring value.
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