If this sequel—["The Old Patagonian Express"] must be called that—is not so delightful as "The Great Railway Bazaar," the fault is as much geography's as Theroux's. Europe and Asia are a richer venue for this sort of thing than Latin America, which by contrast lacks character, deep literary and historical associations, and variety. For anyone experienced with Europe, it is desperately boring. Squalor in Mexico is identical to squalor in El Salvador; th...

[The Old Patagonian Express: By Train Through the Americas] is a sequel to the author's superbly entertaining The Great Railway Bazaar: By Train Through Asia. Longer than its predecessor, and a good deal grimmer, it has fewer comic moments to divert us from the poverty Mr. Theroux everywhere encounters and which, since he speaks Spanish, is not so forgettably anonymous as the Asian distress that figured as little more than dusky scenery in the Railway Bazaar. I suspect that this book was also harder ...

Like a third-class coach on a rickety railroad, [The Old Patagonian Express] offers fleeting glimpses of scenic beauty, even more fleeting glances into other people's lives and long stretches of discomfort, fatigue and tiresome companions before leaving you, finally, at a cold dark station in South Godforsaken doubting the trip was worth it…. [Theroux] sees scenic splendors as well, but does not dwell long on them. What he does lavish detail on are his discomforts. The crankiness of Railway Ba...

[The Old Patagonian Express] is not primarily a political book; politics just seep in everywhere, as it seems they must in South America. It is chiefly a book about Paul Theroux's determination to travel the length of America by train in the teeth of the opposition mounted by circumstances or by those operating the railway system. There is even a belated goal to this journey, a meeting in Buenos Aires with Jorge Luis Borges. This meeting symbolises the way in which the journey from Boston to Buenos A...

[It] would be silly to pretend that [The Old Patagonian Express] is as fascinating as the author's The Great Railway Bazaar, with its rich rewards in the Middle East, India and Russia. Still Theroux makes the most of little things: birds the size of a cuckoo in a cuckoo clock, or the sign in a Bogota church warning the devout that pints of holy water may be collected in bottles but never in jugs. But in spite of such attention to detail the author is frequently driven to filling up by telling us abou...