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About
The book about America de Tocqueville might have written had he spent some time in the nation's smoking sections
Using two cross-country trips on Amtrak as her narrative vehicles, British writer Jenny Diski connects the humming rails taking her into the heart of America with the track-like scars leading back to her own past. As she did in the highly acclaimed Skating to Antarctica, Diski has created a seamless and seemingly effortless amalgam of reflection and revelation. Stranger on a Train is a combination of travelogue and memoir, a penetrating portrait of America and Americans that is at the same time an unsparing look in the mirror. Traveling and remembering both involve confronting strangers-those we have just met and those we once were-and acknowledging the play of proximity and separation. Diski has written a moving, courageous, and deeply rewarding book about who we are, and the landscapes through which we have passed to get there.
Using two cross-country trips on Amtrak as her narrative vehicles, British writer Jenny Diski connects the humming rails taking her into the heart of America with the track-like scars leading back to her own past. As she did in the highly acclaimed Skating to Antarctica, Diski has created a seamless and seemingly effortless amalgam of reflection and revelation. Stranger on a Train is a combination of travelogue and memoir, a penetrating portrait of America and Americans that is at the same time an unsparing look in the mirror. Traveling and remembering both involve confronting strangers-those we have just met and those we once were-and acknowledging the play of proximity and separation. Diski has written a moving, courageous, and deeply rewarding book about who we are, and the landscapes through which we have passed to get there.
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Reviews
"Stranger on a Train is not only a fun book (how un-British), it is an important book."
Los Angeles Times Book Review
"A dream of a writer...[Stranger on a Train] does what the best travel literature does: It takes you somewhere. . . lovely."
The Washington Post
"Distinctly Nabokovian. . .Funny, surprising and harrowing, Stranger on a Train delivers the kind of adventure travel we will always need: its discoveries aren't new places but fresh new ways of seeing old ones."
The New York Times Book Review