Fresh-Air Fiend

Paul Theroux has been hailed as the best travel writer of his generation. Fresh-Air Fiend is an essential collection, which includes 52 remarkable pieces written over the last 15 years. Wonderfully broad in scope, thought, and feeling, the book touches down on five continents and floats through most of the seas in between. From the snowbound Maine woods, to the expectant chaos of Hong Kong on the eve of the Hand-over, to a remote island in the Pacific where the first atomic bombs were detonated, Theroux is the perfect guide – casually informative, keenly observant, wry, and entertaining. As Time has written, Theroux “serves as both the camera and the eye, and both the details and the illusions are developed with brilliance.” From the Trade Paperback edition.