Bound in publisher's original brown textured paper boards stamped in gilt in a fine dust jacket. Author's first book. Fine condition.

Arabia Through the Looking Glass

RABAN, Jonathan

Travel

William Collins

George Grey has been abroad for 40 years. He returns home nursing a vision of an England that has all but vanished. Everything seems cold and hostile. Moreover, George can't seem to make heads or tails of his only daughter, nor she him. Then George hatches his plan! He will escape--to the sea. Once embarked, George conjures up his earlier life--and the characters and events of the past become subtly, intricately interwoven with the demons and uncertainties of the present. These confused daydreams counterpoint to his growing command of his boat and love of the sea. "Engaging, eventful, often very funny and quite beautifully written." (The London Times)

Foreign land

Literature & Fiction

Contemporary

Viking Press

A story of self discovery set against a journey across America. It follows the author as he moves from the social battlefield of Manhattan to rural Alabama, continually reinventing his own character as he travels. By the author of "Old Glory" and "Arabia through a Looking Glass".

Hunting Mister Heartbreak

The Harvill Press

Put Jonathan Raban on a boat and the results will be fascinating, and never more so than when heâ€™s sailing around the serpentine, 2,000-mile coast of his native England. In this acutely perceived and beautifully written book, the bestselling author of Bad Land turns that voyageâ€“which coincided with the Falklands war of 1982-into an occasion for meditations on his country, his childhood, and the elusive notion of home. Whether heâ€™s chatting with bored tax exiles on the Isle of Man, wrestling down a mainsail during a titanic gale, or crashing a Scottish house party where the kilted guests turn out to be Americans, Raban is alert to the slightest nuance of meaning. One can read Coasting for his precise naturalistic descriptions or his mordant comments on the new England, where the principal industry seems to be the marketing of Englishness. But one always reads it with pleasure.

Coasting

Collins, Harvill

For Love and Money is the 'part case history, part memoir' of a modern man of letters: a selection of Jonathan Raban's very best essays, reportage, travel writings and literary criticism, linked with a narrative thread that bravely attempts the agonizing and revelatory question 'Why do you write?' 'His writing articulates a style of humane and witty conversation: he excels at the revealing anecdote, the smart phrase, the art of happy extravagance. And by being perhaps the only critic of calibre who is not an egomaniac, his judgements emerge as the elegant ponderosities of an intelligent reader - and not from a critic at all' Roger Lewis, Punch 'You see with pleasure how reading has shaped without subduing his style. Raban is never guilty of supposing that he can use lower writing powers because what he's doing is only journalism. The splices are excellent. Raban is interesting everywhere' Frank Kermode, London Review of Books 'A marvellously absorbing anthology which leaves you eager for Raban's next haul of sightings and soundings' Times Literary Supplement 'A marvellous writer. On books and travel he is spellbinding' Sunday Times

For love and money

Raban's documentary portrait of metropolitan life written as part thesis,part reportage and part autobiography.

Soft City

Politics & Social Sciences

Social Sciences

Harpercollins

347p paperback with pictorial cover, some pencil markings to endpaper, cover and edges a little yellowed, pages clean and unmarked, very good

Travel Writing

Fontana/Collins

Soft city

Fontana

The author describes his life as a writer, his experiences sailing around Europe, and his observations on literature

For Love & Money: A Writing Life 1969-1989

Biographies & Memoirs

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

Hunting Mister Heartbreak: A Discovery of America

History

Americas

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Books by RABAN, Jonathan

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by RABAN, Jonathan. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Arabia Through the Looking Glass

Foreign land

Hunting Mister Heartbreak

Coasting

For love and money

Soft City

Arabia Through the Looking Glass

Soft city

For Love & Money: A Writing Life 1969-1989

Hunting Mister Heartbreak: A Discovery of America