jonathanraban.com
The Site
The Books
"A collection of literature unequaled for style and consistency"
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The Articles
"Raban's occasional journalism is like a running coversation with the world"
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Bits and Bobs
Irregular short contributions from the desk of Jonathan Raban
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books by jonathan raban
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."
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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

"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 >

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 >
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the books
Surveillance
Explore the current political climate in this clever, unsettling novel set in a near-future Seattle More >
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My Holy War: Dispatches from the Home Front
Raban showcases his unparalleled ability to articulate an incisive intellectual position from the morass More >
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Waxwings
a caustic, affectionate commentary on the manic gyrations of millennial America More >
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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 >
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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 >
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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 >
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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 >
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For Love & Money: Writing, Reading, Travelling 1968-1987
Reportage, travel writings and literary criticism. More >
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God, Man and Mrs. Thatcher
Provocative pamphlet More >
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Foreign Land
Foreign Land is an exquisitely moving tale of awkward relationships and quiet redemption. More >
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Coasting
“A lively, intensely personal recounting of a voyage into a gifted writer's country and self.” More >
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Old Glory
Witty, elegaic, and magnificently erudite, Old Glory is as filled with strong currents as the Mississippi itself. More >
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Arabia
A must read for anyone seeking to understand the Middle East and it's people. More >
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