Passage To Juneau: a Sea and Its Meaning

'Raban is, for my money, one of the key writers of the past three decades - not only for his immense stylistic showmanship, but also for the way he has taken that amorphous genre call ''travel writing'' and utterly redefined its frontiers... Passage to Juneau is his finest achievement to date. Ostensibly an account of a voyage Raban took from his new home in Seattle to the Alaskan capital through that labyrinthine sea route called the Inside Passage, it is, in essence, a book about the nature of loss.... You close this extraordinary book marvelling at this most distressing but commonplace of ironies. He's home, but he's lost. Just like the rest of us' Douglas Kennedy, Independent.

'This is an extraordinary book... The epic journey through eddies, rips, whirlpools and various other marine terrors quickly becomes intensely personal... Passage to Juneau is far more than a meditation on the sea and its meanings; it is also an unsparing self-examination, written with mordant humour and forensic ruthlessness' Justin Cartwright, Daily Telegraph

'A thrilling adventure and a telling internal exploration.... the writing contains natural description of breathtaking exactness.... and the sea itself - in all its moods - has surely never been so intricately painted' Edward Marriott, Evening Standard

'His erudition is enormous, his prose as beautiful and clear as the blue ocean on a crisp morning and his sense of joy at having found his place in the world is immensely rewarding. Passage through Juneau is a wonderfully fluid read. It is also a thought-provoking and challenging work that is likely to splash around in the memory long after the volume has been consigned to the shelf'. Anthony Sattin, Sunday Times

This work is much more than a book about a sea voyage; it is about Jonathan Raban's journey home to his father who is dying; about his crumbling relationship with his wife and also about the historical journey of the maddening Vancouver in his search for the North West Passage.

The Picador B format edition of Raban's account of a voyage through the "inside passage" from Seattle to Juneau, Alaska. "Most beautifully told. Vivid and fresh with observation. It looks like a travel book but it's much less expected and more troubling than that" "The Spectator". "Unlike other travel books, this is the genuine article... it is a thrilling adventure" "The Times".