| The Site |
 |
| The Books |
 |
"A collection of literature unequaled for style and consistency"
more >
|
|
| The Articles |
 |
"Raban's occasional journalism is like a running coversation with the world"
more >
|
|
| Bits and Bobs |
 |
Irregular short contributions from the desk of Jonathan Raban
more>
|
|
|
 |
| Welcome to Jonathan Raban.com |
 |
|
Welcome to the Jonathan Raban Fan Site, source of all things Raban from Books to Articles and other odds and ends. Know of anything interesting Raban wise on the web? well feel free to drop me an e-mail. info@jonathanraban.com
|
|
| latest news |
|
|
| | In Seattle with Jonathan Raban |
|
Norfolk-born writer Jonathan Raban takes Mike Hodgkinson of the Guardian on a tour of his adopted hometown.
|
| writers recommend the perfect literary travelling companions |
|
Raban recommends Bernard Malamud in The Guardian
|
| Raban on Brophy |
|
Jonathan Raban has contributed essays to a book on the paintings of Oregon's Michael Brophy
|
| Down and Out in Seattle |
It’s left to the homeless to remind us of economic calamity, Raban in The New York Times.
|
| Jonathan Raban on Primary Season (Updated) |
Raban on Obama in the London Review of Books. On the US Primaries for the Guardian, Good News in Bad Times and Divided they Stand
and The Independent, We are Fighting the Wrong Battles.
|
| Raban on Meek |
|
Jonathan Raban reviews "We Are Now Beginning Our Descent" by James Meek in the London Review of Books. See Articles Section.
|
| Raban on Video |
|
Jonathan Raban on turning the world into words, the value of skepticism, his role as a writer, the age of the blog and more. Video embedded half way down this page.
|
| Seattle P-I Writer in Residence: Jonathan Raban |
|
Raban is the ninth of 12 Writers in Residence whose work is appearing monthly in the P-I this year. This essay by Jonathan Raban is titled "Mr. Bierstadt Speaks His Mind."
|
| The Dog Incident |
|
Listen to Jonathan Raban's audio contribution to Seattle Weekly's Real Stories of Metro Transit's Meanest, Weirdest, Cheapest, Horniest, and Smelliest Passengers
|
| The Perfect City |
"I dream of living in a city like Dickens's London, that marvellous labyrinth of dark alleys, secrets, surprises, extreme economic inequalities, coincidences, possibilities, where every kind of human imperfection and eccentricity finds its niche."
Jonathan Raban in the Monocle
|
| Boom Town USA |
"No city I knew seemed on such comfortable and unselfconscious terms with its own beginnings."
Jonathan Raban on Seattle. Update: provoking some great comments at Crosscut here and here.
|
| The nuclearization of the world |
|
Joathan Raban's review, in the International Herald Tribune, of "The Atomic Bazaar", by William Langewiesche. Now in The Articles Section
|
|
| featured article |
|
 |
|
|
Diary: I'm for Obama | | |
I want a hero: an uncommon want
When every year and month sends forth a new one,
Till, after cloying the gazettes with cant,
The age discovers he is not the true one.
Byron, Don Juan
|
|
| |
| featured book |
|
|
|
|
Passage to Juneau: a sea and its meanings | | |
| "Gallivanting around the world in a small boat is a continuing education in one's limitless capacity for self-delusion." |
| | With the same rigorous observation (natural and social), invigorating stylishness, and encyclopedic learning that he brought to his National Book Award-winning Bad Land, Jonathan Raban conducts readers along the Inside Passage from Seattle to Juneau. The physical distance is 1,000 miles of difficult-and often treacherous-water, which Raban navigates solo in a 35-foot sailboat.
But Passage to Juneau also traverses a gulf of centuries and cultures: the immeasurable divide between the Northwest's Indians and its first European explorers-- between its embattled fishermen and loggers and its pampered new class. Along the way, Raban offers captivating discourses on art, philosophy, and navigation and an unsparing narrative of personal loss.
| |
| Reviews | |
In Waxwings, Jonathan Raban's sympathetic engagement with people and place is as strong as ever.
Colin Greenland, The Guardian, 2006-05-15 more > | "Passage is lively, engaging, fiercely personal and vastly well-informed, filled with history both cultural and natural, tart social observation and entertaining riffs."
Scott Sutherland, Salon.com, 2006-05-15 more > | In Badland: An American Romance, Raban not only describes Eastern Montana's culture, he explains and contextualizes it.
Tom Cahill, Bootsnall.com, 2006-05-15 more > | Raban’s way of looking at the world in "Old Glory" is so trenchant, his writing so vibrant, that you too, will be disappointed when the trip ends.
Nancy Chapelle, Books I Loved.com, 2006-05-15 more > | If someone were to come along, dig a moderately deep hole in my garden, give me a metal box and tell me I had half an hour to put together a 2006 time-capsule, Jonathan Raban's new novel is the first thing I'd grab.
Toby Litt, The Guardian, 2006-09-30 more > | We need sane voices in these times, and they don't come much saner, or indeed much more alert and stylish, than Jonathan Raban's.
Nicholas Lezard, The Guardian, 2006-04-15 more > |
|
|
| the books |
|
| Surveillance
|  Explore the current political climate in this clever, unsettling novel set in a near-future Seattle More > | buy at Amazon (US) >
buy at amazon (UK) >
| |
| My Holy War: Dispatches from the Home Front
|  Raban showcases his unparalleled ability to articulate an incisive intellectual position from the morass More > | buy at amazon (US) >
buy at amazon (UK) >
| |
| Waxwings
|  a caustic, affectionate commentary on the manic gyrations of millennial America More > | buy at Amazon (US) >
buy at Amazon (UK) >
| |
| Passage to Juneau: a sea and its meanings
|  "Gallivanting around the world in a small boat is a continuing education in one's limitless capacity for self-delusion." More > | buy at Amazon (US) >
buy at Amazon (UK) >
| |
| Badland: An American Romance
|  "No one has evoked with greater power the marriage of land and sky that gives this country both its beauty and its terror."
More > | buy at Amazon (US) >
buy at Amazon (UK) >
| |
| Hunting Mr Heartbreak
|  An exhilarating, often deliciously funny book that is at once a travelogue, a social history, and a love letter to the United States. More > | buy at Amazon (US) >
buy at Amazon (UK) >
| |
| Soft City
|  Part fact, part fiction, it holds up a mirror to the modern city and finds there a stage for a unique personal drama. More > | buy at Amazon (US) >
buy at Amazon (UK) >
| |
| For Love & Money: Writing, Reading, Travelling 1968-1987
|  Reportage, travel writings and literary criticism. More > | buy at Amazon (US) >
buy at Amazon (UK) >
| |
| God, Man and Mrs. Thatcher
|  Provocative pamphlet More > | buy at Amazon (US) >
buy at Amazon (UK) >
| |
| Foreign Land
| | Foreign Land is an exquisitely moving tale of awkward relationships and quiet redemption. More > | buy at Amazon (US) >
buy at Amazon (UK) >
| |
| Coasting
|  “A lively, intensely personal recounting of a voyage into a gifted writer's country and self.” More > | buy at Amazon (US) >
buy at Amazon (UK) >
| |
| Old Glory
|  Witty, elegaic, and magnificently erudite, Old Glory is as filled with strong currents as the Mississippi itself. More > | buy at Amazon (US) >
buy at Amazon (UK) >
| |
| Arabia
|  A must read for anyone seeking to understand the Middle East and it's people. More > | buy at Amazon (US) >
buy at Amazon (UK) >
| |
|
