Supremely moving. A master class in detail and sensuous evocation.
The Financial Times of London
Yet another stimulating volume in [Theroux's] impressive canon.
The San Francisco Chronicle
Erotic intrigue is at the heart of these stories, each of which renders familiar territory wonderfully strange.
Vogue
For armchair adventuring, STRANGER AT THE PALAZZO D'ORO is golden.
Boston Herald
an accomplished book by an accomplished writer (B+) Denver Rocky Mountain News
Therou'x prose is shot through with gentle melancholy, evoking the complexities of matters of the heart with subtlety and grace. (3.5 out of 4 stars) People Magazine
Theroux has rarely been in better form.
The Los Angeles Times
futher proof that Theroux, the evocative prose stylist, remains ever worth reading.
The Washington Post
Compelling reading.
Charlotte Observer
Theroux has the ability to capture people and places that are achingly beautiful Pittsburg Post Gazette
Theroux uses his precise, realistic style like a scalpel...a marvelous yarn.
Providence Journal
a satisfying mix of tales...[Theroux's] stories are engrossing and evoke an air of sensuality.
The Oregonian
Oddly beguiling...dramatically rich.
Contra Costa Times —
Description
"This is my only story. Now that I am sixty I can tell it." He, the narrator, was a twenty-one-year-old art student traveling the world. She was a countess -- apparently cold, haughty, and inaccessible -- traveling with Haroun, her ambiguous companion. When the young man makes their acquaintance at a hotel in Sicily, he finds himself filled with unexpected lust and playing a part in something he doesn't quite understand. Filled with Theroux's typically effortless but devastating descriptions of people and places, The Stranger at the Palazzo d'Oro is a brilliant portrayal of aging and decay, a shocking tale of sensuality in a golden age.
The thrill and risk of pursuit and desire mark the accompanying stories of the sexual awakening and rites of passage of a Boston boyhood, the ruin of a writer in Africa, and the bewitchment of a retiree in Hawaii. This is Paul Theroux at his most allusive and wise, writing with a deep understanding of the frailties of men and boys.
