The book came out in 2011. And I recently discovered it in my local library. (If you can't actually travel, then the library is the best option, until you can).
The reviewers don't seem to like it much. And Hugh Thomson makes some excellent points in his review at the Independent. Theroux does "make a great deal of himself", and perhaps he doesn't "exude inner calm.". but perhaps he tries to find that sense of peace. A sense which only comes when he leaves home, and strikes out into the world, with no other purposed than to see it. He doesn't desire to conquer it, or master it, or rule it.
Too often in life that is what many of us find ourselves doing. And here in this book are examples of others who did life a little different. Saw life a little different. Perhaps that is enough.
I know it makes me long to get on a train, or a ship and see a view different than the one I see now, and will see tomorrow, and that I have seen for way too many months.
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