| The Site |
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| The Books |
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"A collection of literature unequaled for style and consistency"
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| The Articles |
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"Raban's occasional journalism is like a running coversation with the world"
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| Bits and Bobs |
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Irregular short contributions from the desk of Jonathan Raban
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| Welcome to Jonathan Raban.com |
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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
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| latest news |
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| | The Golden Trumpet |
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Jonathan Raban takes a close look at Barack Obama's rejection of the political philosophical and legislative record of the previous administration.
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| All the Presidents' Literature |
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Jonathan Raban's latest article on the best presidential writers, and what Barack Obama's memoirs say about how he'll lead.
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| Raban on Vidal |
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In the grand sweep of Vidal's aquiline view, American history has been a succession of tragic follies, and his essays, in their still-uncollected totality, amount to a massive prose Dunciad of literary and political knaves, hacks, and blockheads. The Prodigious Pessimist
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| Raban on Election Night |
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grown men and women wept in gratitude
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| NYRB/Guardian America Election Event |
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This fall, The New York Review of Books and Guardian America will bring their writers and editors together to discuss the issues shaping the 2008 election campaign. October 30, 7:30 pm, Elliott Bay Book Company at Town Hall, Seattle, WA. Panelists: Martin Kettle, Thomas Powers, Jonathan Raban, and Michael Tomasky.
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| Cut, Kill, Dig, Drill |
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In the run up to the Vice-Presidential Debate, Jonathan Raban's latest article for the London Review of Books examines the Palin phenomenon "...told that she has 15 seconds in which to answer, Palin invariably beats the clock, and her concision and fluency more than compensate for her unrelenting triteness"
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| Just Two Clicks |
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Jonathan Raban's latest long essay is for the London Review of Books on Neil Entwistle, a seemingly ordinary 27-year-old englishman who shot dead his american wife, rachel and their baby daughter. Just Two Clicks
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| London Calling |
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Jonathan Raban revisits Soft City in his latest Financial Times essay 'My Own Private Metropolis'Â and writes a review, 'Crashing the Party', of 'The Anglo Files: A Field Guide to the British' by Sarah Lyall in the New York Review of Books.
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| Granta Article & Interview |
'Granta 102: The New Nature Writing' sees an essay from Jonathan Raban; "Second Nature" an exploration of man’s attempts to control raw nature.
Also an interview for Granta here.
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| featured article |
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Second Nature | | |
| When I was seventeen in 1959, the lake was as wild a place as I knew. My friend Jeremy Hooker and I would arrive there at around four a.m. in early summer, ditch our bikes in the tangle of rhododendrons, and pick out the narrow path by torchlight as we tiptoed, in existentialist duffel coats, through the brush. |
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| featured book |
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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."
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| | "No one has evoked with greater power the marriage of land and sky that gives this country both its beauty and its terror."
Washington Post Book World
In 1909 maps still identified eastern Montana as the Great American Desert. But in that year Congress, lobbied heavily by railroad companies, offered 320-acre tracts of land to anyone bold or foolish enough to stake a claim to them. Drawn by shamelessly inventive brochures, countless homesteaders--many of them immigrants--went west to make their fortunes. Most failed. In Bad Land, Jonathan Raban travels through the unforgiving country that was the scene of their dreams and undoing, and makes their story come miraculously alive.
In towns named Terry, Calypso, and Ismay (which changed its name to Joe, Montana, in an effort to attract football fans), and in the landscape in between, Raban unearths a vanished episode of American history, with its own ruins, its own heroes and heroines, its own hopeful myths and bitter memories. Startlingly observed, beautifully written, this book is a contemporary classic of the American West.
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| 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 > |
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| the books |
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| 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) >
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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 > | buy at amazon (US) >
buy at amazon (UK) >
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| Waxwings
|  a caustic, affectionate commentary on the manic gyrations of millennial America More > | buy at Amazon (US) >
buy at Amazon (UK) >
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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 > | buy at Amazon (US) >
buy at Amazon (UK) >
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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 > | buy at Amazon (US) >
buy at Amazon (UK) >
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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 > | buy at Amazon (US) >
buy at Amazon (UK) >
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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 > | buy at Amazon (US) >
buy at Amazon (UK) >
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| For Love & Money: Writing, Reading, Travelling 1968-1987
|  Reportage, travel writings and literary criticism. More > | buy at Amazon (US) >
buy at Amazon (UK) >
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| God, Man and Mrs. Thatcher
|  Provocative pamphlet More > | buy at Amazon (US) >
buy at Amazon (UK) >
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| Foreign Land
| | Foreign Land is an exquisitely moving tale of awkward relationships and quiet redemption. More > | buy at Amazon (US) >
buy at Amazon (UK) >
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| 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) >
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| 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) >
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| 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) >
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