Driving Home: An American Scrapbook

Charting a course through the Pacific Northwest, through American history and recent world events, Driving Home is a must for fans of Jonathan Raban, as well as the perfect introduction to anyone not yet familiar with his writing.

For over thirty years now, Jonathan Raban has written about movement; about people and places in transition, of journeys undertaken and destinations never quite reached but, also, of what it means to belong, to feel rooted. Yet if these themes are evident in any one of Raban's books, then it is Driving Home -- a collection of pieces spanning two decades -- where we can see Raban's preoccupations most clearly. Writing about public, personal and political spaces, about books, current affairs and literature, his tone is intimate yet, with an outsider's eye for the absurd, never nostalgic, and always fresh. Variously frank, witty and provocative, Driving Home is part essay collection, part diary -- and wholly engrossing.