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The Happy Isles of Oceania: Paddling the Pacific Paperback – December 8, 2006

by Paul Theroux (Author)
4.4 4.4 out of 5 stars 721 ratings
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The author of The Great Railway Bazaar explores the South Pacific by kayak: “This exhilarating epic ranks with [his] best travel books” (Publishers Weekly).

In one of his most exotic and adventuresome journeys, travel writer Paul Theroux embarks on an eighteen-month tour of the South Pacific, exploring fifty-one islands by collapsible kayak. Beginning in New Zealand's rain forests and ultimately coming to shore thousands of miles away in Hawaii, Theroux paddles alone over isolated atolls, through dirty harbors and shark-filled waters, and along treacherous coastlines.

Along the way, Theroux meets the king of Tonga, encounters street gangs in Auckland, and investigates a cargo cult in Vanuatu. From Australia to Tahiti, Fiji, Easter Island, and beyond, this exhilarating tropical epic is full of disarming observations and high adventure.

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Previous page
  1. Print length
    528 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    Mariner Books
  4. Publication date
    December 8, 2006
  5. Dimensions
    5.5 x 1.19 x 8.25 inches
  6. ISBN-10
    061865898X
  7. ISBN-13
    978-0618658985
  8. See all details
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Editorial Reviews

Review

"Engaging and at times brilliant...he goes places where the rest of us might fear to paddle, often beaching his kayak on a small South Pacific island without the foggiest idea whether those awaiting him will be friendly, indifferent, or anxious to give him a good thwack...well worth reading." USA Today

"A superb blend of sharp-eyed observation and pungently expressed opinion. It's hardly paradise, this lovely part of the world, but Theroux makes it endlessly fascinating." Newsday

"Feisty, eloquent, and vast in scope...a multilayered odyssey." The San Francisco Chronicle

"Perceptive, terribly readable, and wickedly funny...[An] exhilarating book." --Book Review The Los Angeles Times —

About the Author

PAUL THEROUX is the author of many highly acclaimed books. His novels include The Bad Angel Brothers, The Lower River, Jungle Lovers, and The Mosquito Coast, and his renowned travel books include Ghost Train to the Eastern Star and Dark Star Safari. He lives in Hawaii and on Cape Cod.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Mariner Books; 1st edition (December 8, 2006)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 528 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 061865898X
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0618658985
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.05 pounds
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.5 x 1.19 x 8.25 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.4 4.4 out of 5 stars 721 ratings

About the author

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Paul Theroux

Paul Theroux

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Paul Theroux was born and educated in the United States. After graduating from university in 1963, he travelled first to Italy and then to Africa, where he worked as a Peace Corps teacher at a bush school in Malawi, and as a lecturer at Makerere University in Uganda. In 1968 he joined the University of Singapore and taught in the Department of English for three years. Throughout this time he was publishing short stories and journalism, and wrote a number of novels. Among these were Fong and the Indians, Girls at Play and Jungle Lovers, all of which appear in one volume, On the Edge of the Great Rift (Penguin, 1996).

In the early 1970s Paul Theroux moved with his wife and two children to Dorset, where he wrote Saint Jack, and then on to London. He was a resident in Britain for a total of seventeen years. In this time he wrote a dozen volumes of highly praised fiction and a number of successful travel books, from which a selection of writings were taken to compile his book Travelling the World (Penguin, 1992). Paul Theroux has now returned to the United States, but he continues to travel widely.

Paul Theroux's many books include Picture Palace, which won the 1978 Whitbread Literary Award; The Mosquito Coast, which was the 1981 Yorkshire Post Novel of the Year and joint winner of the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, and was also made into a feature film; Riding the Iron Rooster, which won the 1988 Thomas Cook Travel Book Award; The Pillars of Hercules, shortlisted for the 1996 Thomas Cook Travel Book Award; My Other Life: A Novel, Kowloon Tong, Sir Vidia's Shadow, Fresh-air Fiend and Hotel Honolulu. Blindness is his latest novel. Most of his books are published by Penguin.

Customer reviews

4.4 out of 5 stars
4.4 out of 5
721 global ratings
An Intriguingly Adventurous, and Educational Read!
4 Stars
An Intriguingly Adventurous, and Educational Read!
Very interesting journey, well written in-depth descriptions of Oceania and Polynesians.
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Top reviews from the United States

David Roderick
5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent Overview of Oceania
Reviewed in the United States on March 19, 2020
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This is a great book for the adventurous traveler who wishes to learn about the customs and realities of Oceania. Bringing a folding German kayak, Paul Theraux paddles a good number of waters off the islands of NZ, Australia, Easter Island, Papua New Guinea, the Solomons, Fiji, the Cooks, Tonga, Hawaii and others. Having traveled and explored many of these same places, sometimes renting a sit-on kayak locally, I found the book fascinating from an author and traveler who has a keen sense of adventure, humor, observation skills, and courage for engaging locals and finding out about their way of life and history. To make a long story short, this is an exceptional book by one of the best travel authors in the business. The South Pacific in particular still has the allure and attraction of long ago. I am so glad that I was able to visit in the 1980's and 1990's.
4 people found this helpful
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J. Luis Madrid
4.0 out of 5 stars Learn the reality of South Pacific Islands and you will never have a desire to go there.
Reviewed in the United States on March 28, 2016
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This was a great book...beware it is not uplifting. But then you read Theroux to get at the truth and there is probably no more aburdly hyped area of the world than the South Pacific Islands. I also knew very little about this part of earth...I knew New Guinea was extremely primitive and knew there were black melanesians along with lighter skinned polynesians and had heard of the big names like Fiji and Tahiti Samoa but that was about it.

What Theroux describes is a very low brow culture who use the ocean as a garbage dump and toilet--there is little organization except where religion from missionaries has prevailed. There is a constant background torment from biting flys and mosquitoes. These people have completely lost their original talents of coping with the environment...They don't make boats anymore (for the most part) don't fish in deep waters... They are reduced very much like Indian reservations in the US to gov't handouts where they are lucky enough to get them and getting drunk or high on kava. Violent rude inhospitable for the most part...again like an Indian reservation.

You come out concluding they are probably less intelligent than the Indians of Fiji--unmotivated and living for the day to get drunk or show up in church.

The only part of the book that gets boring is once he arrives in Hawaii where there is a totally incongruous chapter on a luxury bungalow---you can only conclude he was paid for that as an advertisement.

I encourage you to read it to see the problems New Zealand and Australia are dealing with. Theroux does not give these 2 countries any credit but then he is a dyed in the wool liberal former peace corps type. Which makes the horror of the islands all the more believable.
5 people found this helpful
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lanoitan
5.0 out of 5 stars I feel so lucky to have found Paul Theroux
Reviewed in the United States on February 11, 2007
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Before starting to read PT's travel books, I had to search for a book to read and I started many which I ended up throwing away after reading a hundred or so pages and I decided to give up on writing negative reviews as a result. Then I read Dark Star Safari and now I want to read all of PT's books.

Theroux mentions so many different things during his travels that it is difficult to tell you just what the books are like, except to say that while reading, it feels like you are there witnessing these people and places with him. I will give just one example from Oceania which I found great fun to read, namely his description of Dame Cath Tizard's way of eating. He wrote, "She scraped food onto her fork, but before she heaved it she nudged more onto the fork with her thumb. And after she ate the forkful she licked her thumb. Once I caught her grinning at me, but she was not grinning. She was trying to dislodge a bit of food that had found its way between her teeth, and still talking and grinning, she began picking her teeth. Having freed the food from her teeth, she glanced at it and pushed it into her mouth. (while talking of her being chosen governor-general)...Her finger was in her mouth, fishing for bits of trapped lamb sinews... And she slurped the food off her finger, and then began scraping the plate...." I'm not saying I have the greatest table manners myself, but I simply revelled in reading this description.

I can understand that there are many people who wouldn't like reading him and who would disagree with Paul Theroux's views. I am saying I find his writing thoroughly entertaining and relaxing because I like to see the world the way it really is, the beautiful as well as the ugly, and this book satisfies my curiosity about much of the South Pacific.
10 people found this helpful
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Bob I
5.0 out of 5 stars Great Book on the Pacific
Reviewed in the United States on March 20, 2016
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Ever since seeing the movies Swiss Family Robinson and South Pacific as a kid I've been fascinated by the Pacific and now live in Hawaii several months a year. I liked other books Theroux has written and wanted to learn more about Oceania. He covers wide swaths of the Pacific and his ability to relate unique experiences and to draw interesting conclusions about places and people is his strong suit and makes this book a great one. You don't want it to end, but when it does it makes you both happy to have read it and sad to leave it as he ends it in Honolulu in 1992. It had also made me appreciate more what I already appreciate about my own time in Hawaii. It would be interesting if he could retrace his today route 25 years later like he did in Ghost Train to the Eastern Star. But at his age now of 83 I'm guessing that won't happen.
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booklady331
3.0 out of 5 stars amazing travels
Reviewed in the United States on May 17, 2023
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It is hard for me to imagine anyone wanting to travel so rustic in places he didn’t know. I felt that the author was objective.
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Cissa
4.0 out of 5 stars Interesting exploration
Reviewed in the United States on February 25, 2021
Verified Purchase
Lots of ambiguity here.

It was odd, but the author both disclosed a lot of personal experiences... but as he wrote about it all, it just seemed very distanced- both his introspections, and his experiences. No blame here! I'd be reluctant to show my naked heart to random strangers, tooo- but in many ways he's purporting to do tht, and yet it did not feel to me like this was genuine.

Since that's what really held the whole thing together, that was a problem for me. The anecdotes about the various locales were all very interesting- but distanced. I will say that reading it left me with no desire to visit the South Seas myself, ever- though I enjoyed very much reading about it all.
3 people found this helpful
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Richard Schwindt
5.0 out of 5 stars epic journey, worth reading
Reviewed in Canada on November 22, 2018
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Paul Theroux has had great longevity as a writer. I read his books twenty-five years ago, and have rediscovered them now. He's famously dour and skeptical; not easily impressed, or politically correct. In fact, there is much to dislike in his books. I read The Happy Isles of Oceania after digesting an excoriating review, and caving in to curiosity. An epic voyage, an epic book; I found it impossible to put down. Theroux travelled in the usual way; but in and around the 52 islands he visited, he negotiated reefs, beaches, rocks and lagoons by collapsible kayak. He talked to people, tried stuff and explored. He slept on the beach, stayed in a few cheap hotels, and in one memorable exposition, ensconced himself in a luxury bungalow in Hawaii. This is a great book; perhaps in part because of the warts, digressions, and occasional mean-spirited take downs. Few of us will ever wander the world with his restless curiosity, and like all great travel writers he allows us to tag along inside his head.
2 people found this helpful
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Mary
5.0 out of 5 stars Paul Theroux en el Pacífico
Reviewed in Spain on August 24, 2019
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El autor describe Oceanía con una realismo que deshace cualquier idea de islas paradisiacas que alguna vez he podido tener sobre la vida actual en las islas del Pacífico. Sus observaciones son al mismo tiempo profundas y entretenidas. Uno de los libros de Theroux que más estoy disfrutando.
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Nicholas Race
4.0 out of 5 stars Four Stars
Reviewed in Australia on February 4, 2016
Verified Purchase
Good view of the different islands
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Mr. P. J. Morgan
5.0 out of 5 stars My favorite book of Paul Theroux
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on November 6, 2008
Verified Purchase
I also read this book first when I was 16 and loved it. I've read many of Paul Therouxs travel and other books. This is by far my favorite hence I am buying it again to take on holiday and read while I am traveling around Thailand over Christmas. Anyone with a love of traveling, or an interest in Oceania will love this book. My second favorite book of his is Riding the Iron Rooster, then The Consuls File which is not a travel book is an excellent read.
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Roger Cooper
4.0 out of 5 stars Great book, excellent order handling
Reviewed in Canada on September 2, 2013
Verified Purchase
This is another classic Theroux, very funny, with an insider's view of the south Pacific islands, including New Zealand and Australia. Don't leave without it!
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