The Imperial Way – Paul Theroux (1985) (1st ed)

S$42.00

The Imperial Way – Paul Theroux (1985) (1st ed)

S$42.00

Title: The Imperial Way: Making Tracks from Peshawar to Chittagong

Author: Paul Theroux, Steve McCurry (photographs)

Publisher: Hamish Hamilton, London, 1985. First edition.

Condition: Hardcover, with dust jacket. Dust jacket sunned. Else fine. A large book, app 10″x8″. Profusely illustrated with colour photographs.

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About the book (from jacket flap):

‘India. How does this vast overpopulated subcontinent manage to run, and even prosper? For 130 years the chief reason has been the railway. Dusty and monumental, its trains often seem ancient as India itself. In Pakistan they look like part of the landscape. An old reliable network of track brings hope to beleaguered Bangladesh.’

Paul Theroux had been across India before and described it memorably in The Great Railway Bazaar. Now he decided to revisit the subcontinent and taste again the pleasures and the hardships of the railways. His route took him from Peshawar, up near the Khyber Pass, down through Islamabad and Lahore; on into India, to Simla, New Delhi, Varanasi, Calcutta and Darjeeling; and to Dhaka and Chittagong in Bangladesh. The landscapes were immense and varied; the people overwhelming; the trains themselves often eccentric, sometimes palatial. Evocative names like Amritsar, Chandigarh, Agra, Lucknow, English Bazaar passed the window and the observer.

The Imperial Way contains not only a brilliantly vivid text by Paul Theroux, but also a collection of beautiful photographs by Steve McCurry; of the country, of the people, above all of the trains. The combination is a perfect conjuring up of the Indian subcontinent.