Paul Theroux’s journeys have taken
readers to the ends of the earth and back again-
across China in Riding The Iron Rooster, deep into
the Americas in the Old Patagonian Express, through
Europe and Asia in The Great Railway Bazaar. Now
Theroux launches his most exotic and tantalizing
adventure yet, as he kayaks the shimmering Pacific
from island to island, exploring its surfy coasts
and blue lagoons, and happily taking up residence to
discover the secrets of these happy isles.
Theroux compares the vast Pacific to the
Universe: each island like a distant star, each
archipelago like a galaxy. His travels begin in what
he calls “Meganesia”: the great islands of New
Zealand, where he walks the mountain trails of the
Fiordland wilderness; and Australia, where he hikes
the red ranges around Alice Springs (“Oceania after
someone has pulled the plug”) and camps among
crocodiles and wild pigs on an Aboriginal reserve.
Then, traveling with his collapsible kayak. Theroux
lives among the Trobriand Islanders of New Guinea,
and discovers the truth about their fabled sexual
lives. From there, via the megapode egg-diggers of
the Solomon Islands and the cargo cults of Vanuatu,
he proceeds to Melanesian Fiji and Polynesian Tonga,
where he is granted an audience with King Taufa’ahau
Tupou IV. After living a Robinson Crusoe fantasy on
a desert island, Theroux continues under tropical
skies to Samoa, the Cook Islands, Tahiti, the
Marquesas, and the last points on the Polynesian
triangle: Easter Island and the paradise of Hawaii.
A mesmerizing narrator- brilliant, witty, keenly
perceptive- Paul Theroux enters a Gauguin painting,
sails in the wake of Captain Cook, recalls the
bewitching tales of Jack London and Robert Louis
Stevenson, and we follow. Alone in his kayak,
paddling to seldom visited shores, he glides through
time and space, discovering a world of islands,
their remarkable people, and in turn, happiness. |
