Vintage departures Series

'Coasting is half travel book, half autobiography, half novel (never mind the arithmetic), marvellously written and superbly constructed. The author's intention was surely to sail through time and place, to chart the coastline of his own past, to take soundings of his future, while bobbing around the edges of Britain...The result is a triumph, and should be read for its evocation of childhood and awkward adolescence, its portrayal of his father, its descriptions of places and sunsets, of incidents and accidents. In short a writer's view of England and the English, including himself. It's the sort of book you put among your favourite books you keep on your desk or table, the ones you pick up over and over again to re-read with undiminished pleasure, the sort you wish you'd written yourself' Beryl Bainbridge, Spectator

Old Glory

by Jonathan Raban

Published 1 January 1981

'A stunning success...Raban takes us floating through the heart of America...more successful than 99% of the books about America since De Tocqueville's Democracy in America' New York Times 'Mr Raban has a keen ear, but, for the river itself, he has to evince not only a keen eye but a capacity to use a painter's palette. He gives us the strong brown god in all its rage, sullenness and beauty' Anthony Burgess, Observer 'This is a fascinating and enchanting book. It is never dull, and yet there are facts aplenty to be picked up on the way. I enjoyed every mile of the journey' Evening Standard

Passage to Juneau

by Jonathan Raban

Published 12 October 1999

The Inside Passage from Puget Sound to Alaska is winding, turbulent, and deep--an ancient, thousand-mile-long sea route, rich in dangerous whirlpools, eddies, rips, and races. Here flourished the canoe culture of the Northwest Indians, with their fantastic painted masks and complex iconography and their stories of malign submarine gods and monsters. The unhappy British ship Discovery, captained by George Vancouver, came through these open reaches and narrow chasms in 1792. The early explorers were quickly followed by fur traders, settlers, missionaries, anthropologists, fishermen, and tourists, each with their own designs on this intricate and haunted sea.

Foreign Land

by Jonathan Raban

Published 6 June 1985

For over thirty years, Goerge Grey has been a ship bunker in the west African nation of Montedor, a land of malaria and political upheaval. But now he's returning to England, to a life and world essentially foreign, and to the terra incognita of retirement. In the long days that follow it's almost impossible not to get lost in melancholy memories - all the more acute since the woman he loves is back in Africa - but with the help of a sailing boat and a burgeoning friendship with the quirkiest woman in town, the ache of loneliness begins to ease.

'Jonathan Raban's achievements in this novel are nothing short of awesome' Washington Post

'Raban has a wonderful gift . . . These characters seem to index an entire civilisation' Voice Literary Supplement

Bad Land

by Jonathan Raban

Published 11 October 1996

In 1993 Jonathan Raban entered the Badlands, a place the size of England and the least visited region in all of the United States. Here he came across the ruins of a community and isolated homesteads. These homes, he realized, gave clues as to the characters and lives of the thousands of landless people who, seduced by the advertising of the railroad companies in the early 20th century, took the train West in search of new lives and a permanent agricultural community. What had happened to turn these homesteaders' hopes of a new beginning into such despair? The land which betrayed them turned out to be an America in miniature. This is their story.

Hunting Mister Heartbreak

by Jonathan Raban

Published 1 May 1991

A New York Times Notable Book

"In an era of jet tourism, [Jonathan Raban] remains a
traveler-adventurer in the tradition of . . . Robert Louis Stevenson."
--The New York Times Book Review

In 1782 an immigrant with the high-toned name J. Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur--"Heartbreak" in English--wrote a pioneering account of one European's transformation into an American. Some two hundred years later Jonathan Raban, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award, arrived in Crèvecoeur's wake to see how America has paid off for succeeding generations of newcomers. The result is an exhilarating, often deliciously funny book that is at once a travelogue, a social history, and a love letter to the United States.
In the course of Hunting Mr. Heartbreak, Raban passes for homeless in New York and tries to pass for a good ol' boy in Alabama (which entails "renting" an elderly black lab). He sees the Protestant work ethic perfected by Korean immigrants in Seattle--one of whom celebrates her new home as "So big! So green! So wide-wide-wide!"--and repudiated by the lowlife of Key West. And on every page of this peerlessly observant work, Raban makes us experience America with wonder, humor, and an unblinking eye for its contradictions.

"Raban delivers himself of some of the most memorable prose ever written
about urban America." --Henry Kisor, Chicago Sun-Times

"When Raban describes America and Americans, he is unfailingly witty
and entertaining." --Salman Rushdie

Coasting

by Jonathan Raban

Published 4 February 2003

Put Jonathan Raban on a boat and the results will be fascinating, and never more so than when he’s sailing around the serpentine, 2,000-mile coast of his native England. In this acutely perceived and beautifully written book, the bestselling author of Bad Land turns that voyage–which coincided with the Falklands war of 1982-into an occasion for meditations on his country, his childhood, and the elusive notion of home.

Whether he’s chatting with bored tax exiles on the Isle of Man, wrestling down a mainsail during a titanic gale, or crashing a Scottish house party where the kilted guests turn out to be Americans, Raban is alert to the slightest nuance of meaning. One can read Coasting for his precise naturalistic descriptions or his mordant comments on the new England, where the principal industry seems to be the marketing of Englishness. But one always reads it with pleasure.