Estonia: A Ramble Through The Periphery HC - Hardcover

Theroux, Alexander

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1606994654 ISBN 13: 9781606994658

Publisher: Fantagraphics Books, 2011

Synopsis

• Alexander Theroux accompanied his wife to Estonia, occasioning this penetrating examination of a country. Share Theroux's fascination with Estonians' language, manners, and legacy of occupation and subordination as it leads him to a revelatory examination of Estonia's peculiar place in European history. All the while, his trademark acrobatic allusions, quotations, and digressions — which take us from Hamlet through Jean Cocteau to Married... with Children — render his travels as much internal and psychical as they are external and physical. This travelogue of his nine months abroad also brims with anecdotes of Theroux's encounters with Estonian people and — in some of its most bitterly comedic episodes — his fellow Americans whom he at times feels more alienated from than the frosty, humorless Europeans. Estonia: A Ramble Through the Periphery is as biting and satirical as it is witty and urbane: as curious and lyrical as it is brash and irreverent.

About this title

Review

...Estonia bristles with fascinating detail. --Ian Thompson

...Mr. Theroux largely uses Estonia as a space for his own purposes, transforming this admirable country into a grotesque but clever caricature perfect for use as... a stage for Mr. Theroux's verbal pyrotechnics and some fine jokes... I laughed a lot, but guiltily. --Andrew Stuttaford

Catch the wit and the venom, the depth and the breadth, of this honest account of 'a strange, unlooked-for place at the back of beyond' where 'the fascination of its strangeness' renders it a fitting subject for a curious report by a memorably talented, ever off-kilter, chronicler of oddity. [Rating] 8/10 --John L. Murphy"

Mr. Theroux largely uses Estonia as a space for his own purposes, transforming this admirable country into a grotesque but clever caricature perfect for use as... a stage for Mr. Theroux's verbal pyrotechnics and some fine jokes... I laughed a lot, but guiltily. --Andrew Stuttaford"

Estonia bristles with fascinating detail. --Ian Thompson"

Some of the most interesting travel books happen by accident. .... Despite all [his] genuine delight in the quaint, not merely linguistic but extending also to Estonian architecture, what Mr. Theroux mostly shows us about the country and its people is exasperation, irritation, furious rage. . . He takes endless potshots at their food . . .but by the time you . . . find a section titled 'What did I hate about Estonia, ' it s no surprise. --Martin Rubin"

The best travel writing is uncomfortable and, perversely, obviates the need to see the place yourself. I've begun reading Alexander Theroux on Estonia from Fantagraphics and it is the god d@mned best. "

About the Author

Alexander Theroux is an award-winning novelist, poet, and teacher whose prose works include Laura Warholic or, The Sexual Intellectual, Estonia, and the two artist monographs The Strange Case of Edward Gorey and The Enigma of Al Capp. His novel Darconville's Cat was chosen by Anthony Burgess as one of the 99 greatest post-war novels. He lives in Massachusetts with his wife and children.

Edition details

• Publisher: Fantagraphics Books
• Publication date: 2011
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1606994654
• ISBN 13: 9781606994658
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 288
• Editor: Groth Gary