Description:
A Toronto Star bestseller
Acclaimed, bestselling author and ""master of modern travel writing" (Wall Street Journal) Paul Theroux turns his gaze to Canada in a sweeping, personal journey.
For more than half a century, Paul Theroux has traveled the globe and chronicled its far corners with curiosity, wit, and an unflinching eye. With True North, his twelfth travel book, he turns that eye to a country that has long been his quiet neighbor: Canada.
What begins as the completion of a North American road trip trilogy becomes something more personal. Theroux traces his own ancestral connection to Quebec, where his forebear Antoine Theroux arrived in the 17th century. Theroux meets his Quebcois friends and relations, then travels more widely through remote villages, multicultural cities, and sweeping landscapes that have defined modern Canada. Along the way, he speaks with farmers, refugees, writers like John Irving and Michael Ondaatje, and Indigenous leaders such as Tanya Talaga, listening as Canadians reckon with identity, belonging, and patriotism, often in response to the jabs and provocations of their southern neighbor.
From snowbound Ottawa at the height of political protests to the Viking settlement at L'Anse aux Meadows, from Toronto's "ethno-burbs" to Vancouver's Pacific gateway, True North is a panoramic portrait of a vast country both familiar and elusive. It is also a meditation on kinship, migration, and the resilience of a people shaped by history, geography, and challenging weather.
With the empathy of a companion and the sharpness of a cultural critic, Theroux delivers a timely, vivid travel narrative that reveals Canada as never before--diverse, unsettled, and alive with stories.
Brief description:
Paul Theroux is the author of many highly acclaimed books. His novels include Burma Sahib, The Bad Angel Brothers, The Lower River, Jungle Lovers, and The Mosquito Coast, and his renowned travel books include Ghost Train to the Eastern Star, On the Plain of Snakes, and Dark Star Safari. He lives in Hawaii and on Cape Cod.
Review Quotes:
A New York Times "Book We Love" * A New York Times Book Review "Editor's Choice" * An AARP "Top Read" * A Literary Hub "Most Anticipated" * A Daily Kos "Notable New Nonfiction"
"In the opening line of his latest book--his 54th--he makes a distressing revelation. Distressing, that is, because no one who revels in reading about foreign lands would want this man, the master of modern travel writing, to stop doing what he does so well." - Wall Street Journal
"Theroux is the gold standard among travel writers . . . The voices of Canadians of all kinds come through on nearly every page, providing real insight at a tumultuous time." - Library Journal
"Timely . . . a cross-country account of what Canada is and what it means to the people who live there." - New York Times
"A crisp chronicler of natural vistas and cityscapes, Theroux is at his best when detailing his interactions with people . . . This sprawling account will captivate readers who yearn not just for escape but for experience." - Publishers Weekly
"A fascinating portrait of a complex - and uniquely inviting - country." - Christian Science Monitor
"Like me, Paul Theroux is a fellow New Englander who has traveled - we've both lived a lot of our eighty four years outside our birth country. We both know that before you can be a good writer, you have to be a keen observer." - John Irving
"(True North) made me, in my depths, long to be back in Canada." - Hugh Brody, author of Landscapes of Silence: from Childhood to the Arctic.
"A fascinating account....Theroux's sharp tongue enlivens the book and makes readers long for the great years when few people went abroad." - Jeffrey Meyers, for The Article