Norman Dietz

Travelling across bush and desert, down rivers and across lakes, and through country after country, Theroux visits some of the most beautiful landscapes on earth, and some of the most dangerous. It is a journey of discovery and of rediscovery, of the unknown and the unexpected, but also of people and places he knew as a young and optimistic teacher forty years before.

Paul Theroux depicts a train journey down the length of North and South America, from ice-bound Massachusetts to the arid plateau of Argentina’s most southerly tip. He describes the people he encountered – the tedious Mr Thornberry in Limón and reading to the legendary blind writer, Jorge Luis Borges, in Buenos Aires.