True North

Acclaimed, bestselling author and travel writer Paul Theroux turns his gaze to Canada in a sweeping, personal journey.

For more than half a century, Paul Theroux has traveled the globe and chronicled its far corners with curiosity, wit, and an unflinching eye. With True North, his twelfth travel book, he turns that eye to a country that has long been his quiet neighbor: Canada.

What begins as the completion of a North American road trip trilogy becomes something more personal. Theroux traces his own ancestral connection to Quebec, where his forebear Antoine Theroux arrived in the 17th century. Theroux meets his Quebcois friends and relations, then travels more widely through remote villages, multicultural cities, and sweeping landscapes that have defined modern Canada. Along the way, he speaks with farmers, refugees, writers like John Irving and Michael Ondaatje, and Indigenous leaders such as Tanya Talaga, listening as Canadians reckon with identity, belonging, and patriotism, often in response to the jabs and provocations of their southern neighbor.

From snowbound Ottawa at the height of political protests to the Viking settlement at L'Anse aux Meadows, from Toronto's “ethno-burbs” to Vancouver's Pacific gateway, True North is a panoramic portrait of a vast country both familiar and elusive. It is also a meditation on kinship, migration, and the resilience of a people shaped by history, geography, and challenging weather.

With the empathy of a companion and the sharpness of a cultural critic, Theroux delivers a timely, vivid travel narrative that reveals Canada as never before—diverse, unsettled, and alive with stories.