Estonia

Tunnustatud kirjaniku, luuletaja, esseisti ja õpetaja Alexander Theroux esimene reisikiri keskendub tema Eesti-muljetele, viibides Eestis pikemalt koos maalikunstnikust abikaasaga.

Any journey with Alexander Theroux is an education. Possessed of a razor-sharp and eidetic mind, he stands as one of the most astute cultural commentators of our time. So when he decided to accompany his wife – the artist Sarah Son-Theroux – on her Fulbright Scholarship to Estonia, it occasioned this penetrating examination of a country that, for many, seems alien and distanced from the modern world.

For Theroux, the country and its people become a puzzle. His fascination with their language, manners, and legacy of occupation and subordination leads him to a revelatory examination of Estonia's peculiar place in European history. All the while, his trademark acrobatic allusions, quotations and digressions – which take us from «Hamlet» through Jean Cocteau to «Married... with Children» – render his travels as much internal and psychical as they are external and physical. Through these obsessive references to Western culture, we come to appreciate how insular the country has become, yet also marvel at its fierce individuality and preternatural beauty, such is the skill of Theroux's gaze.

This travelogue of his months abroad also brims with anecdotes of Theroux's encounters with Estonian people and – in some of its most bitterly comedic episodes – his fellow Americans whom he at times feels more alienated from than the frosty, humorless Europeans.

As biting and satirical as it is witty and urbane; as curious and lyrical as it is brash and irreverent. It marks a new highlight in an already stellar career.