The Roads to Sata by Alan Booth - ISBN: 9780141992839
Paperback
Epic trek across Japan unveils a nation’s hidden heart.

The Roads to Sata

A 2000-mile walk through Japan

$22.51

  • Paperback

    336 pages

  • Release Date

    2 February 2021

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Summary

A classic of modern travel writing - the story of one man’s epic trek across Japan, from north to south.

One sunny spring morning in the 1970s, an unlikely Englishman set out on a pilgrimage that would take him across the entire length of Japan. Travelling only along small back roads, Alan Booth travelled on foot from Soya, the country’s northernmost tip, to Sata in the extreme south, traversing three islands and some 2,000 miles of rural Japan. His mission - ‘to come to grips with th…

Book Details

ISBN-13:9780141992839
ISBN-10:0141992832
Author:Alan Booth
Publisher:Penguin Books Ltd
Imprint:Penguin Books Ltd
Format:Paperback
Number of Pages:336
Release Date:2 February 2021
Weight:230g
Dimensions:197mm x 129mm x 22mm
What They're Saying

Critics Review

‘Illuminating’

‘Illuminating’ * Economist *
‘A memorable, oddly beautiful book’ * Wall Street Journal *
‘A marvellous glimpse of the Japan that rarely peeks through the country’s public image’ * Washington Post *
Fluent in the language, well-informed and disabused, [Booth] is in the fine tradition of hard-to-please travellers like Norman Douglas, Evelyn Waugh, and V.S. Naipaul. A sharp eye and a good memory for detail…give an astonishing immediacy to his account. * The Times Literary Supplement *
[Booth] achieved an extraordinary understanding of life as it is lived by ordinary Japanese….Frequently brilliant in his insights * The New York Times *
‘One of the classic Japan travel books of the modern age … a vivid but witty portrayal of rural Japan in the seventies, and the quirky characters who populated it’ * Japan Times *
Booth vividly evokes his 2,000-mile, 128-day journey on foot from Japan’s northernmost point, Cape Soya in Hokkaido, to Cape Sata in the south. As he recounts his misadventures on this epic trek, he engagingly reveals the realities of off-the-tourist-track Japan. * National Geographic *

About The Author

Alan Booth

Alan Booth was born in London in 1946 and travelled to Japan in 1970 to study Noh theatre. He stayed, working as a writer and film critic, until his untimely death in 1993.

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