Jonathan Raban

The author describes his solo voyage from his Seattle home to the Alaska Panhandle.

A Sea and Its Meanings

Passage to Juneau

Hailed by critics, a chronicle of a journey by motorboat down the Mississippi River traces the vicissitudes of the waterway and the lives of the people along its banks with eloquence, wit, and erudition. Reprint. 17,500 first printing.

A Voyage Down the Mississippi

Old Glory

For more than thirty years, Jonathan Raban has written with infectious fascination about people and places in transition or on the margins, about journeys undertaken and destinations never quite reached, and, as an expat, about what it means to feel rooted in America. Spanning two decades, Driving Home charts a course through the Pacific Northwest, American history, and current events as witnessed by "a super-sensitive, all-seeing eye. Proving that an outsider is the keenest observer of the scene that natives take for granted, this collection of Jonathan Raban’s essays affirms his place as the most literate, perceptive, and humorous commentator on the places, characters, and obsessions that constitute the American scene. Raban spots things we might otherwise miss; he calls up the apt metaphors that transform things into phenomena. "He is one of our most gifted observers." (Newsday).

An American Journey

Driving Home

Journeys beyond the myth of the American West to reveal the harsh and desperate realities of the homesteaders' lives, offering an incisive portrait of the American heartland that redefines the essence of the American dream. Reprint. 60,000 first printing. Tour. NYT.

An American Romance

Bad Land

Documents the experience of carving one's own path through the tangle and sprawl of urban metropolitan life. This book recreates the city in its teeming, unknowable variety. Part fact, part fiction, it holds up a mirror to the modern city and finds there a stage for a unique personal drama.

Soft City

Relates the author's experiences as he traveled through the United States to discover the essence of the American identity.

A Discovery of America

Hunting Mister Heartbreak

Presents the record of experiences, impressions, and observations by the noted British author of Bad Land, who travelled the coasts of

A Private Journey

Coasting

Waxwings

A Memoir

Father and Son

`The Seafarer', one of the earliest poems in the English language, makes the perfect embarkation point for this fascinating voyage through the literature of the sea in all its many guises. The practical business of Renaissance exploration gives way to the gentlemanly pursuit of eighteenth-century sea travel, only for this tranquility to be swept aside by the archetypal storms of the Romantics. The nineteenth century saw such professional sailors as Melville, Conrad, and Masefield use thesea as a striking setting for heroism and adventure, while in more recent times fathoming the mystery and meaning of the sea has been the territory of poets and oceanographers. Well-known for his deep knowledge of the literature of the sea, Jonathan Raban has written a lively and perceptive Introduction that pays particular attention to the differences between British and American ways of looking at the sea.

The Oxford Book of the Sea

In a post-9/11 America that has become obsessed with security and intelligence gathering, Lucy Bengstrom struggles as a freelance journalist until she is assigned to profile August Vanags, a retired professor turned best-selling author.

Surveillance

A novel set in Seattle at the turn of the millennium follows two immigrants as they struggle to achieve the American dream in the midst of terrorism, economic fireworks, and unrest in the streets.

At the turn of the millennium, two immigrants are drawn to the United States by their own versions of the American Dream. For Tom Janeway - a Hungarian-born English intellectual most at home with his books - it's the family he thought he'd never have. For Chick - an illegal alien newly escaped from a cargo container - it's the land of plenty he imagined back in China. But as the stock market hits a new high, anti-globalist riots break out in the streets, a terrorist is arrested and a child disappears, the two men's dreams collide in a way neither could have anticipated. Unjustly accused of a horrific crime, estranged from his wife and his beloved young son, Tom's life is rapidly unravelling. Chick, meanwhile, has a burgeoning business by day but no safe place to lay his bed at night. For both, the New World proves surprisingly full of old ways. Waxwings is a masterwork. Exquisitely written, moving, funny and hugely entertaining, it brilliantly captures the landscape and life of contemporary America, and it confirms Jonathan Raban as one of our very finest writers.

Mark Twain: Huckleberry Finn

A Novel

Daniël Kok

Verslag van ervaringen tijdens een reis door de dunbevolkte Amerikaanse staat Montana.

een Amerikaanse liefdesgeschiedenis

Leeg land

Combines travel commentary and historical and cultural observation in a sweep look at the Arab states of the Middle East, describing social levels, landscapes, cities, attitudes, traditions, and rapid changes.

Arabia Through the Looking Glass

From Jonathan Raban, the award--winning author of Bad Land and Passage to Juneau, comes this quirky and insightful story of what can happen when one can and does go home again. For the past thirty years, George Grey has been a ship bunker in the fictional west African nation of Montedor, but now he's returning home to England-to a daughter who's a famous author he barely knows, to a peculiar new friend who back in the sixties was one of England's more famous singers, and to the long and empty days of retirement during which he's easy prey to the melancholy of memories, all the more acute since the woman he loves is still back in Africa. Witty, charming and masterly crafted, Foreign Land is an exquisitely moving tale of awkward relationships and quiet redemption.

Foreign Land

In 1993 Jonathan Raban entered the Badlands. Here he came across the ruins of a community and isolated homesteads. These homes, he realized, gave clues as to the characters of the people who took the train West in the early 20th century in search of new lives. This is their story.

Jonathan Raban

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