On the Plain of Snakes
A Mexican Road Trip
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4.0 • 3 Ratings
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- £7.99
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- £7.99
Publisher Description
WINNER OF THE EDWARD STANFORD AWARD FOR OUTSTANDING CONTRIBUTION TO TRAVEL WRITING 2020
The master of contemporary travel writing, Paul Theroux, immerses himself in the beautiful and troubled heart of modern Mexico
Nogales is a border town caught between Mexico and the United States of America. A forty-foot steel fence runs through its centre, separating the prosperous US side from the impoverished Mexican side. It is a fascinating site of tension, now more than ever, as the town fills with hopeful border crossers and the deportees who have been caught and brought back. And it is here that Paul Theroux will begin his journey into the culturally rich but troubled heart of modern Mexico.
Moving through the deserts just south of the Arizona border, Theroux finds a place brimming with charm, yet visibly marked by both the US border patrol looming to the north and mounting discord from within. Attending local language and culinary schools, driving through the country and meeting its people, Paul Theroux gets under the skin of Mexico.
From the writer praised for his 'curiosity and affection for humanity in all its forms' (New York Times Book Review), On The Plain of Snakes is an urgent and mesmerising exploration of a region in conflict.
Praise for Paul Theroux:
'As cool as Maugham... as observant, intuitive, wry, inventive and eloquent as Graham Greene' Sunday Times
'Theroux's work remains the standard by which other travel writing must be judged' Observer
'The world's most perceptive travel writer' Daily Mail
'One of the most accomplished and worldly-wise writers of his generation' The Times
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Travel writer Theroux (Deep South) finds a Mexico that's vibrant but shadowed by violence, corruption, and America in this dark-edged but ultimately hopeful travelogue. Theroux shudders at Mexico's soulless northern border cities, their touristy downtowns surrounded by grim factory districts and squalid urban sprawl dotted with Walmarts, their newspapers filled with accounts of drug cartel massacres. In Mexico City he gets shaken down for bribes by predatory policemen, whom many Mexicans fear more than the narcotraficantes. Farther south, though, Theroux's spirits lift in towns that retain their indigenous culture of colorful Day of the Dead festivals, exuberant transgenderism, and close-knit communities though many locals have moved to the U.S. to find work. (He includes candid conversations with migrants about their travails in America and calls President Trump's immigration policies "barbaric.") Finally, Theroux discovers a virtual paradise at a Zapatista Rebel Autonomous Municipality in Chiapas, where there are no "American products or American influence," and instead "an utter indifference to El Norte." There, he meets Subcomandante Marcos, a "philosopher-leader" whose "flashing" eyes, "sinuous dialectics," and poetic denunciations of neoliberalism he admires, as Theroux relays in perhaps the most starry-eyed passages he has ever written. Theroux's usual excellent mix of vivid reportage "worshippers crouched on the floor arranging candles... drinking Coca-Cola and ritually burping" and empathetic rumination is energized by a new spark of political commitment. Armchair travelers will find an astute, familiar guide in Theroux.
