The Happy Isles of Oceania was published by Hamish Hamilton in 1992. Written during and after the collapse of his marriage, it is Theroux’s most emotionally raw travel book — the Pacific journey functioning simultaneously as geographical exploration and psychological flight.
Theroux traveled with a collapsible Klepper kayak, paddling between islands where possible and taking local boats and flights where not. The book moves through New Zealand, Australia (where his friendship with V.S. Naipaul collapsed), the Solomon Islands, Papua New Guinea, Fiji, Tonga, Samoa, Tahiti, the Marquesas, Easter Island, and Hawaii.
The Pacific islands forced a different method on Theroux: trains reveal human society through conversation, but kayaking reveals landscape through solitude. The book’s best passages are physical — the sensation of paddling alone on open water, the approach to an island from sea level, the texture of coral and volcanic rock. The worst passages (Theroux acknowledged) are the inevitable encounters with other tourists, whom he loathes with a venom that approaches self-parody.
Collecting The Happy Isles of Oceania
First edition (Hamish Hamilton, London, 1992): Boards with dust jacket.
Market values:
- UK first edition, fine in jacket: $15–$30
- US first edition (Putnam): $10–$25