WALKING ON THE MOON - About the Book ___________________________________________________________________________ adventure travel, memoir, Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer, Mark Salzman, Iron & Silk, Alex Garland, The Beach, Hunter Thompson, Hunter S. Thompson, gonzo journalism, flashpacking, flashpacker, Lonely Planet, Rough Guides, backpacking, Southeast Asia, China, Japan, Thailand, electronic music, raves, techno, Peter Delevett, Delevett

"There is nothing more important in the world than the world, and you've got to see it all before you get too old or too married, too mortgaged or strung-out."

About the Book

It's the early 1990s. With the country at war in Iraq and the economy in recession, a freshly-minted Ivy League graduate boards a plane at JFK with a backpack and a one-way ticket around the world. In the ensuing 14 months – through 14 countries – he confronts that world and his place in it.

Our traveler is Peter Delevett, a future columnist, editor and travel writer at a major U.S. newspaper. As the book opens, he is escaping to the other side of the world. We follow as he stumbles the streets of Tokyo, rides the rails across Asia and explores the universal subjects of sex, love, death and coming of age.

What results is WALKING ON THE MOON, a book about travel in all its forms: physical, spiritual, emotional. It looks back on a pre-Sept. 11 world where overseas wanderings were the mainline of a generation ready to hit the Great Wall of China and an all-night rave in the same week.

Unfolding as a series of travel narratives, the story tracks him through meditative moments, quirky cultural crossroads and dark, sensual places: every corner of the landscape that young travelers turn. He seeks a higher truth in exotic religions and struggles to find peace with his straitlaced father. Part "Iron and Silk," part "Tropic of Cancer," with a dash of Hunter Thompson’s gonzo journalism, WALKING ON THE MOON aims to share one writer's impressions of Asia – mystical, beautiful and bizarre – as well as the journey into his own soul.

Young people of many lost generations dream of putting on a backpack and seeing the world before life and youth slip away. WALKING ON THE MOON is what happens when you live that fantasy.

Home