Author:Paul Theroux

Award-winning writer Paul Theroux draws upon personal experience of living in Malawi in his eye-opening novel, about one man's return to an Africa he no longer recognises, The Lower River.
Decades ago Massachusetts salesman Ellis Hock spent four years in Africa - and the continent has never left him. So when his wife walks out and his business goes belly up, Ellis turns back to the one place in which he briefly found happiness.
Yet returning to the village of Malabo shocks him. The school he built is a ruin. The people he remembers are poor, apathetic, hostile. The country labours as if under a great, invisible burden. However, Ellis is determined. This is his escape, a paradise regained.
But escape can be a snare, a trap for the unwary . . .
The Lower River is a hypnotic, compelling and brilliant return to a terrain no one has ever written better about than Paul Theroux: the tragic stage of modern Africa, AIDS-ravaged and despairing in the face of creeping consumerism, greed and dependence.
'Remarkable, admirable, riveting, heartbreaking. A masterly, moving portrait of how Africa ensnares and enchants' Guardian
'Terrific writing. Theroux's senses are always on full alert' Evening Standard
'Powerful, vivid, shocking' The Times
'Theroux invests this very 21st-century journey into the heart of ennui with a caustic bite, like the snakes that pop up throughout' Metro
'The sense of menace is masterful. Theroux has never written a better novel' Sunday Telegraph
American travel writer Paul Theroux is known for the rich descriptions of people and places that is often streaked with his distinctive sense of irony; his novels and collected short stories, My Other Life, The Collected Stories, My Secret History, The Stranger at the Palazzo d'Oro, A Dead Hand, Millroy the Magician, The Elephanta Suite, Saint Jack, The Consul's File, The Family Arsenal, The Mosquito Coast, and his works of non-fiction, including the iconic The Great Railway Bazaar are available from Penguin.
Fans of Buffy and Charmed will love it … I enjoyed it immensely.
—— Sunday IndependentAn irreplaceable classic...One of the great books from which we may understand America and its rise...
—— Robert StoneHeft is written with a dry wit and the characters are hugely likeable … It’s moving and tragic too.
—— Daily MailNuanced and poignant… each of the three acutely written principals of Moore’s second novel hooks the reader in a heartbeat. Heft is an understated yet intensely emotional work.
—— Financial TimesA gentle fiction, as big-hearted as it’s star is heavy.
Heft is a suspenseful, restorative novel from one of our fine young voices
—— Colum McCann, author of Let the Great World SpinMoore’s characters are lovingly drawn . . . A truly original voice.
—— The New YorkerLiz Moore has a light touch… she never takes her characters too seriously, letting their drama and sadness trickle through slowly rather than undamming any torrent of emotion or sentimentality. This knack is largely down to her seemingly effortless, economic prose as well as her appreciation of the notion of loneliness.
—— Time OutA book to be devoured
—— HeatSelasi's ambition - to show her readers not "Africa" but one African family, authors of their own achievements and failures - is one that can be applauded no matter what accent you give the word
—— Nell Freudenberger , The New York TimesThe first line of Taiye Selasi's buoyant first novel, Ghana Must Go, captures the book in miniature: "Kweku dies barefoot on a Sunday before sunrise, his slippers by the doorway to the bedroom like dogs." The springy dactylic meter of the prose (KWEku dies BAREfoot on a . . .), the sly internal rhymes (Sunday, sunrise, doorway), the surprising twist on a cliché (to die like a dog), the invigorating mixture of darkness and drollery are a big part of what makes this book such a joy... It's an auspicious how-do-you-do to the world, and nearly every page of the novel displays the same bounce and animation... rapturous.
—— Wall Street JournalA terse and subtle tour-de-force
—— CaraA slim but sure tale of love, death and imperialism
—— RTE GuideA quietly compelling and provocative work
—— Sunday Business PostA dark and sinewy novel, written with sparse clarity and affecting subtlety
—— Stuart Evers , Observer Books of the YearIn a year marked by epics, it's a relief to delve into this quiet, surprisingly tense debut novel - small enough to stuff in a stocking but packing a huge emotional punch
—— Entertainment WeeklyA novel of subtle beauty and quiet grace; I found myself hanging on every simple word, as tense about the consequences of a man finding an apartment as if I were reading about a man defusing a bomb. ... It is one of the best novels I have read in a long time. ... With elegant restraint, Baxter layers the narratives, anecdotes and experiences in the manner of life as continuous essay, the topic of which might be stated as, "What is a right way to be in the world?" ... It is very much to Baxter's credit that he presents this struggle as if it were thriller, love story, philosophical novel and dark comedy combined, in a novel not liek a bullet but like an arrow flying straight to the heart of the matter.
—— New York Times Book ReviewA quiet and powerful read through and through. Baxter's clean and direct prose generates its own momentum. He chooses not to create a tidy drama where characters are explained by their pasts. Rather, he creates something bigger and more true.
—— Daily BeastCompelling ... captures the mood of the current moment and what seems to be a new "lost generation", one formed not so much by exposure to violence, as immunity to and alienation from it. Once upon a time, there was no place like home; in Mr. Baxter's world, home, it seems, is no place.
—— New York TimesAbsorbing, atmospheric and enigmatic ... With its disorienting juxtaposition of the absolutely ordinary and the strange and vaguely threatening, the novel evokes the work of Franz Kafka and Haruki Murakami, while its oblique explorations of memory suggest a debt to W.G. Sebald
—— Los Angeles TimesA thrilling follow-up to Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island...Silver is a novel that will appeal to readers of all ages. Beautifully written and genuinely exciting...Best of all, Motion’s novel stays true to Stevenson’s original tale while adding an extra dimension.
—— Emma Lee-Potter , Daily ExpressElegant, thrilling sequel...The plot is gripping, a mixture of high adventure, low cunning and desperation...Motion’s prose vivid and glowingly poetic, is a brilliant counterpoint to the fascinating action.
—— Eithne Farry , Daily MailThis is a pacey tale with an appropriately feisty young heroine for modern readers
—— Lesley McDowell , Independent on SundayAndrew Motion brings lyricism but, more importantly, rollicking adventure to this sequel to Treasure Island
—— Mail on Sunday






