Synopses & Reviews
Welcome to the Hotel Honolulu, a down-at-the-heels tourist place thats two blocks from the beach on a back street in Waikiki, where middle America stays and dreams.
Like the Canterbury pilgrims, every guest in this eighty-room hotel has come in search of something sun, love, happiness, unnamable longing and everyone has a story. Honeymooners, vacationers, wanderers, mythomaniacs, soldiers, and families all land at the Hotel Honolulu. But the hotel is as suited to being a crime scene as a love nest. Fortunately, our keen-eyed narrator, a writer down on his luck, is there to relate all the comings and goings. Hes lost money, friends, house, and family, and he has no experience running a hotel. But all that doesnt stop Buddy, the bloated, boozy hotel owner the last of a dying breed from signing him on as manager. It isnt long before the hotel expands to encompass the narrators whole world. His original plan of escape from a life of the mind becomes something altogether different: a way to return to the world he left, the world of imagined life.
No one but Paul Theroux could write this romp of a book, with its acutely drawn characters and canny insights into a place that is often viewed as a simple island paradise. In this unforgettable novel, Theroux shows us a funny, languid, louche floating world, island style. This is the essence of Hawaii as it has never been depicted, and it is also the heart of America.
Review
"In this hypnotically compelling fiction, [Theroux] wrestles with questions of good intentions and harsh reality...A gripping and vital novel that reads like Conrad or Greene—in short, a classic." -- Booklist, starred
Review
"In this hypnotically compelling fiction, [Theroux] wrestles with questions of good intentions and harsh reality...A gripping and vital novel that reads like Conrad or Greene—in short, a classic." -- Booklist, starred "Theroux successfully grafts keen observations about the efficacy of international aid and the nature of nostalgia to a swift-moving narrative through a beautifully described landscape." -- PW, starred "Extraordinary...The suspense is enriched by Therouxs loving attention to local customs and his subversive insights...Theroux has recaptured the sweep and density of his 1981 masterpiece The Mosquito Coast. Thats some achievement." -- Kirkus, starred "Theroux's latest can be read as straight-up suspense, but those unafraid of following him into the heart of darkness will be rewarded with much to discuss in this angry, ironic depiction of misguided philanthropy in a country dense with natural resources yet unable to feed its people." -- Library Journal
Review
"Its a particular kind of frightening fun to watch evil flexing and spreading its leathery wings, and really feel it. The Lower River gives the reader just that." -- The New York Review of Books "The Lower River is riveting in its storytelling and provocative in its depiction of this African backwater, infusing both with undertones of slavery and cannibalism, savagery and disease. Theroux exposes paternalism in Hocks Peace Corps nostalgia, his ‘sense of responsibility, almost a conceit of ownership. That sense of responsibility, and Hocks modest contribution to the welfare of a people he was once genuinely fond of, has been replaced by a harsher mode of operation, run by coldhearted contractors living apart in impregnable compounds. ‘I have to leave, Hock pleads. ‘Im going home. To which the village headman replies, with chilling menace, ‘This is your home, father. " -- New York Times Book Review “[Hock] knows he is ensorcelled by exoticism, but he cant help himself. And, as things go from bad to worse and the pages start to turn faster, neither can we. A.”—Entertainment Weekly
“Therouxs bravely unsentimental novel about a region where he began his own grand career should become part of anybodys education in the continent.”—Washington Post
"In this hypnotically compelling fiction, [Theroux] wrestles with questions of good intentions and harsh reality...A gripping and vital novel that reads like Conrad or Greene—in short, a classic." -- Booklist, starred "Theroux successfully grafts keen observations about the efficacy of international aid and the nature of nostalgia to a swift-moving narrative through a beautifully described landscape." -- PW, starred "Extraordinary...The suspense is enriched by Therouxs loving attention to local customs and his subversive insights...Theroux has recaptured the sweep and density of his 1981 masterpiece The Mosquito Coast. Thats some achievement." -- Kirkus, starred "Theroux's latest can be read as straight-up suspense, but those unafraid of following him into the heart of darkness will be rewarded with much to discuss in this angry, ironic depiction of misguided philanthropy in a country dense with natural resources yet unable to feed its people." -- Library Journal
Review
"...the real pleasure is Therouxs talent for rendering place and his irreverent comments on everything from the British royals to pop culture, aging, and yes, the venerable Mother Teresa."
-- Publishers Weekly "A novel of extremes—rationality and obsession, humanitarianism and selfishness, ecstasy and heartlessness."
-- Kirkus Reviews "...an abundance of richly drawn characters...Theroux has used his travel writer's eye and ear and his novelist's imagination to craft a tense, disturbing, funny and horrifying book around all of them."
-- San Francisco Chronicle "Theroux brings his best gifts as a travel writer to one of his walk-on-the-dark-side fables of masked identity and psychosexual quest…[His] writing is as feline and agile as ever, and his calibration of clue and revelation is nicely meted out…this story will lure you in, from its whodunit setup to its swift, unexpectedly visionary close."
-- The Seattle Times
Review
"A compact, provocative gem of a novel." Boston Globe
"A moody thriller . . . cleverly, tightly constructed, fast-paced." The New York Times
"A taut, illuminating story that transcends it's timely subject . . . A bravura performance." The Washington Post
Review
"among the strongest things Theroux has ever written" The New York Times
"Theroux's best and most entertaining book to date . . a seriously funny novel" Time Magazine
Review
"a delightful, loose-limbed riff of a novel...full of Theroux's sharp wit, unashamed crankiness, pungent observations and surprising insights." The Seattle Times
"a cunningly assembled affair...'Hotel Honolulu' is Theroux at his diabolical best." -Portland Tribune
Review
Supremely moving. A master class in detail and sensuous evocation.
The Financial Times of London
Yet another stimulating volume in [Theroux's] impressive canon.
The San Francisco Chronicle
Erotic intrigue is at the heart of these stories, each of which renders familiar territory wonderfully strange.
Vogue
For armchair adventuring, STRANGER AT THE PALAZZO D'ORO is golden.
Boston Herald
an accomplished book by an accomplished writer (B+) Denver Rocky Mountain News
Therou'x prose is shot through with gentle melancholy, evoking the complexities of matters of the heart with subtlety and grace. (3.5 out of 4 stars) People Magazine
Theroux has rarely been in better form.
The Los Angeles Times
futher proof that Theroux, the evocative prose stylist, remains ever worth reading.
The Washington Post
Compelling reading.
Charlotte Observer
Theroux has the ability to capture people and places that are achingly beautiful Pittsburg Post Gazette
Theroux uses his precise, realistic style like a scalpel...a marvelous yarn.
Providence Journal
a satisfying mix of tales...[Theroux's] stories are engrossing and evoke an air of sensuality.
The Oregonian
Oddly beguiling...dramatically rich.
Contra Costa Times
Synopsis
A taut, tense, darkly suspenseful novel about a man who flees to Africa after his marriage falls apart, only to be caught up in a precarious situation in a seemingly benign village.
Synopsis
Ellis Hock never believed that he would return to Africa. He runs an old-fashioned menswear store in a small town in Massachusetts but still dreams of his Eden, the four years he spent in Malawi with the Peace Corps, cut short when he had to return to take over the family business. When his wife leaves him, and he is on his own, he realizes that there is one place for him to go: back to his village in Malawi, on the remote Lower River, where he can be happy again.
Arriving at the dusty village, he finds it transformed: the school he built is a ruin, the church and clinic are gone, and poverty and apathy have set in among the people. They remember him—the White Man with no fear of snakes—and welcome him. But is his new life, his journey back, an escape or a trap?
Interweaving memory and desire, hope and despair, salvation and damnation, this is a hypnotic, compelling, and brilliant return to a terrain about which no one has ever written better than Theroux.
Synopsis
“Hypnotically compelling fiction . . . A gripping and vital novel that reads like Conrad or Greene—in short, a classic.”—Booklist, starred review
From The Lower River
“Some are alive.”
“Who?”
“Elders.” He named a few families, mentioned people whom Hock didn’t know. He listed the men in the riverside villages of Marka and Magwero whom Hock had met that first day—children, grandchildren of men he’d known.
“And the teacher, that old woman.”
Hock shook his head and squinted for more.
“Gala Mphiri.”
Hock regretted his show of surprise, the “What?” that escaped him as a grunt. But he couldn’t help it—the name was an echo of the name in his mind.
Manyenga didn’t smile. He held the smile back, kept it in his mouth. He knew he had made his point. And it was then that he asked for money.
Synopsis
“Hypnotically compelling fiction . . . A gripping and vital novel that reads like Conrad or Greene—in short, a classic.”—Booklist, starred review
From The Lower River
To make the moment last, Hock peeled one banana slowly with his fingertips and nibbled it, eyeing the distant crowd of children from the shade of his hut. He was impressed by the silence and concentration of the children, and fearful, too, that such a large number could be controlled by the single older boy.
And in that running commentary in his head, his narrative of the misery hed put himself into, he thought how the worst of it was not the dirt or the heat or the thirst—though they wore him down; and not the insects or the bad-tempered children; but the uncertainty, not knowing at the beginning of each day how that day would end.
This thought was cut off by movement at the periphery of his vision, a sliding line at ground level that bunched and swelled and grew longer, crackling through the dead leaves . . . In the snake he saw a friend, a savior, a weapon, a creature that had come to protect him. He was not alone anymore.
Synopsis
This startling, far-reaching book captures the tumult, ambition, hardship, and serenity that mark todays India. Therouxs Westerners risk venturing far beyond the subcontinents well-worn paths to discover woe or truth or peace. A middle-aged couple on vacation veers heedlessly from idyll to chaos. A buttoned-up Boston lawyer finds succor in Mumbais reeking slums. And a young woman befriends an elephant in Bangalore. We also meet Indian characters as singular as they are reflective of the countrys subtle ironies: an executive who yearns to become a holy beggar, an earnest striver whose personality is rewired by acquiring an American accent, a miracle-working guru, and others.
As ever, Therouxs portraits of people and places explode stereotypes to exhilarating effect. The Elephanta Suite is a welcome gift to readers of international fiction and fans of this extraordinary writer.
Synopsis
When Jerry Delfont, an aimless travel writer with writers block (his dead hand”), receives a letter from an American philanthropist, Mrs. Merrill Unger, with news of a scandal involving an Indian friend of her sons, he is intrigued. Who is the dead boy, found on the floor of a cheap hotel room? How and why did he die? And what is Jerry to make of a patch of carpet, and a package containing a human hand?
He is swiftly captivated by the beautiful, mysterious Mrs. Ungerand revived by her tantric massagesbut the circumstances surrounding the dead boy cause him increasingly to doubt the womans motives and the exact nature of her philanthropy. Without much to go on, Jerry pursues answers from the teeming streets of Calcutta to Uttar Pradesh. It is a dark and twisted trail of obsession and need.
Beautifully written, A Dead Hand demonstrates the powerful evocation of place and character that has made Paul Theroux one of the most perceptive and engaging writers today.
Synopsis
Ninety-nine years of colonial rule are ending as the British prepare to hand over Hong Kong to China. For Betty Mullard and her son, Bunt, it doesn't concern them - until the mysterious Mr. Hung from the mainland offers them a large sum for their family business. They refuse, yet fail to realize Mr. Hung is unlike the Chinese they've known: he will accept no refusals. When a young female employee whom Bunt has been dating vanishes, he is forced to make important decisions for the first time in his life - but his good intentions are pitted against the will of Mr. Hung and the threat of the ultimate betrayal.
Synopsis
In the Washington Post Book World, Sven Birkerts called this exuberant novel "a complex and gripping work of invention and confession . . . I understood again how the prose of a true writer can bring us to a world beyond." The book spans almost thirty years in the life of a fictional "Paul Theroux," who moves through young bachelorhood in Africa, in and out of marriage, affairs, and employment, and between continents. It's a wry, worldly, erotic, and deeply moving account of one man's first half century - "among the strongest things Theroux has ever written" (New York Times Book Review).
Synopsis
“[Hock] knows he is ensorcelled by exoticism, but he cant help himself. And, as things go from bad to worse and the pages start to turn faster, neither can we.
A.”—
Entertainment WeeklyWhen he was a young man, Ellis Hock spent four of the best years of his life with the Peace Corps in Malawi. So when his wife of forty-two years leaves him, he decides to return to the village where he was stationed in search of the happiness hed been missing since he left. But what he finds is not what he expected. The school he built is a ruin, the church and clinic are gone, and poverty and apathy have set in among the people.
They remember Ellis and welcome him with open arms. Soon, however, their overtures turn menacing; they demand money and refuse to let him leave the village. Is his new life an escape or a trap?
“Therouxs bravely unsentimental novel about a region where he began his own grand career should become part of anybodys education in the continent.”—Washington Post
“The Lower River is riveting in its storytelling and provocative in its depiction of this African backwater, infusing both with undertones of slavery and cannibalism, savagery and disease.”—New York Times Book Review
Synopsis
"This is my only story. Now that I am sixty I can tell it." He, the narrator, was a twenty-one-year-old art student traveling the world. She was a countess -- apparently cold, haughty, and inaccessible -- traveling with Haroun, her ambiguous companion. When the young man makes their acquaintance at a hotel in Sicily, he finds himself filled with unexpected lust and playing a part in something he doesn't quite understand. Filled with Theroux's typically effortless but devastating descriptions of people and places, The Stranger at the Palazzo d'Oro is a brilliant portrayal of aging and decay, a shocking tale of sensuality in a golden age.
The thrill and risk of pursuit and desire mark the accompanying stories of the sexual awakening and rites of passage of a Boston boyhood, the ruin of a writer in Africa, and the bewitchment of a retiree in Hawaii. This is Paul Theroux at his most allusive and wise, writing with a deep understanding of the frailties of men and boys.
Synopsis
Slade Steadman's lone opus, published twenty years ago, was Trespassing, a cult classic about his travels through dozens of countries without benefit of passport. With his soon-to-be-ex-girlfriend Ava in tow, Steadman sets out for Ecuadors jungle in search of a rare hallucinogenic drug and the cure for his writers block. Amid a gang of thrill-seeking tourists, he finds his drug and his inspiration but is beset with an unnerving side effectperiodic blindness. His world is altered profoundly: Ava stays by his side, he writes an erotic, autobiographical novel with the drug serving as muse, and he returns to stardom.
Steadman becomes addicted to the drug and the insights it provides, only to have them desert him, along with his sight. Will he regain his vision? His visions? Or will he forgo the world of his imagining and his ambition?
As Theroux leads us toward the answers, he makes fresh magic out of the venerable intertwined themes of sight and insight. He also offers incisive, sometimes hilarious takes on the manifold ironies of travel, of trespass and trangession, and of the trappings of the writers lifefrom the fear of the blank page to the unexpected challenges of the book tour.
Synopsis
A new novel from the world's favorite travel writer and best-selling author of the novels The Mosquito Coast and The Elephanta Suite.
Synopsis
Jerry Delfont leads an aimless life in Calcutta, struggling in vain against his writer's block, or 'dead hand,' and flitting around the edges of a half-hearted romance. Then he receives a mysterious letter asking for his help. The story it tells is disturbing: A dead boy found on the floor of a cheap hotel, a seemingly innocent man in flight and fearing for reputation as well as his life.
Before long, Delfont finds himself lured into the company of the letter's author, the wealthy and charming Merrill Unger, and is intrigued enough to pursue both the mystery and the woman. A devotee of the goddess Kali, Unger introduces Delfont to a strange underworld where tantric sex and religious fervor lead to obsession, philanthropy and exploitation walk hand in hand, and, unless he can act in time, violence against the most vulnerable in society goes unnoticed and unpunished.
An atmospheric and masterful thriller from "the most gifted, the most prodigal writer of his generation" (Jonathan Raban).
About the Author
PAUL THEROUX's highly acclaimed novels include Blinding Light, Hotel Honolulu, My Other Life, Kowloon Tong, and The Mosquito Coast. His travel books include Ghost Train to the Eastern Star, Dark Star Safari, Riding the Iron Rooster, The Great Railway Bazaar, The Old Patagonian Express, and The Happy Isles of Oceania. He lives in Hawaii and on Cape Cod.
Table of Contents
Contents The Stranger at the Palazzo dOro 1 A Judas Memoir I. Holy Week 111 II. Pup Tent 136 III. Seeing Truman 154 IV. Scouting for Boys 163 An African Story 225 Disheveled Nymphs 265