• Alexander Theroux accompanied his wife to Estonia, occasioning this penetrating examination of a country. Share Theroux's fascination with Estonians' language, manners, and legacy of occupation and subordination as it leads him to a revelatory examination of Estonia's peculiar place in European history. All the while, his trademark acrobatic allusions, quotations, and digressions — which take us from Hamlet through Jean Cocteau to Married... with Children — render his travels as much internal and psychical as they are external and physical. This travelogue of his nine months abroad also brims with anecdotes of Theroux's encounters with Estonian people and — in some of its most bitterly comedic episodes — his fellow Americans whom he at times feels more alienated from than the frosty, humorless Europeans. Estonia: A Ramble Through the Periphery is as biting and satirical as it is witty and urbane: as curious and lyrical as it is brash and irreverent.

Seeing Estonia disrobing her was my focus.