The Lower River

Key Features

• A hypnotic, compelling and brilliant return to a terrain no one has covered -better than Theroux
• A dark, suspenseful novel with the menacing, page-turning quality of a thriller.
• Paul Theroux is a huge name in travel writing all over the world

About the Book: The Lower River

A dream of Eden in Africa lies in ruins...

Ellis Hock never believed he would ever return to Africa - to his isolated village where he was happiest. He runs an old-fashioned menswear store in a small town in Massachusetts but still dreams of his eden in Africa, the four years he spent in Malawi with the Peace Corps, cut short when he had to return to take over the family business. When his wife leaves him, taking the family home, and his daughter demands her share of his eventual will, he realises that there is one place for him to go: back to Malawi, on the remote Lower River, where he will be happy again Arriving at the dusty village he finds it transformed: the school he built is a ruin, the church and clinic are gone, and poverty and apathy have set in among the people. They remember him - the foreigner with no fear of snakes - and welcome him back. But is his new life, his journey back, an escape or a trap?

About the Author: Paul Theroux

Paul Edward Theroux (born April 10, 1941) is an American travel writer and novelist, whose best known work of travel writing is perhaps The Great Railway Bazaar (1975). He has published numerous works of fiction, some of which were made into feature films. He was awarded the 1981 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for his novel The Mosquito Coast.

Reviews

'Richly enjoyable, entertaining, satisfyingly tense' -Financial Times

'Theroux's writing gets more powerful all the time'- Oliver Sacks

'Beautifully paced, sexy and disturbing' -Washington Post