Hunting Mr. Heartbreak

For hundred of years this sentence has tantalized and inspired Europeans. Jonathan Raban followed in the steps of Hector St John de Crevecoeur -- Mr Heartbreak -- and several million other emigrants to discover America and the immigrant experience afresh. From Liverpool docks he sailed to New York and travelled on to Alabama; Seattle and the Florida Keys. Wherever he went there was a new identity to discover; a new life to live ...'A mordantly funny book that presents itself as a work of reportage but proves to be a work of literature in disguise. It is literary not only in the tightrope acrobatics of its style; its exhilarating verbal inventiveness manages to transform the familiar images and vocabulary of American life into startling novelties' Edward Mendselson; Daily Telegraph 'The best book ever written by an Englishman about the United States' Jan Morris; Independent Books of the Year 'He is most certainly the finest writer afloat since Conrad; and few landlubbers have equalled either his acuteness or his sense of style' Geoffrey Moorhouse; Guardian