The journeys of Paul Theroux take place not only in exotic, unexpected places of the world but in the thoughts, reading, and emotions of the writer himself. A gathering of people, places, and ideas in fifty glittering pieces of gold.

Traveler extraordinary and master of the unexpected insight, Theroux has now brought together the travels that fell outside the scope of his other books. In Sunrise with Seamonsters his journeys take place not only in the exotic, unexpected places of the world but in the thought, reading, and emotions of the writer himself.

The author of The Great Railway Bazaar and The Kingdom by the Sea scans Corsica, Afghanistan, Uganda, and Burma with a wickedly sharp eye; perceives the “seamonsters” off Cape Cod; gets thrown out of Malawi; and takes his chances at his high school reunion, in a leper colony, on the New York subway, and in the world of patrons and patronage. The people he meets along the way, either in person or in their pages, are as wildly assorted as Graham Greene, John McEnroe, V. S. Pritchett, Rudyard Kipling, Henry Miller, and Richard Nixon, but each emerges as a distinctive Theroux portrait, in light and shade, seen suddenly anew.

In Theroux’s view, “it is a ridiculous conceit to think that this enormous world has been exhausted of interest. There are still scarcely visited places and there are exhilarating ways of reaching them ... It is every traveler’s wish to see his route as pure, unique, and impossible for anyone else to recover ... The going is still good."

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