Stranger on a Train : Daydreaming and Smoking Around America with Interruptions

Using two cross-country trips on Amtrak as her narrative vehicles, British writer Jenny Diski connects the humming rails, taking her into the heart of America with the track-like scars leading back to her own past. As in the highly acclaimed Skating to Antarctica, Diski has created a seamless and seemingly effortless amalgam of reflections and revelation in a unique combination of travelogue and memoir.

“Distinctly Nabokovian. . .Funny, surprising and harrowing, Stranger on a Train delivers the kind of adventure travel we will always need: its discoveries aren't new places but fresh new ways of seeing old ones.” —The New York Times Book Review

“Stranger on a Train is not only a fun book (how un-British), it is an important book.” —Los Angeles Times Book Review

“A dream of a writer...[Stranger on a Train] does what the best travel literature does: It takes you somewhere. . . lovely.” —The Washington Post

“A strange and wonderful journey that reads like a synthesis of Sylvia Plath, Martin Amis and the new journalism of John McPhee.” —The Times (London)