All the Right Places

Escaping from a failing marriage, Newsham, a San Franciscan, took off on a trip to the Far East and Russia; this amusing, affecting book presents his impressions of Japan, Hong Kong, China and the Soviet Union. His inability to speak any language but his own turned out to be an obstacle, but not an unsurmountable one. In Japan he stopped in Tokyo, bicycled into the countryside and visited Hiroshima, where the full horror of the atomic bombing became apparent to him. He found China more primitive than he anticipated, with a lot of labor performed at a pre-industrial level and repression still a fact of life. After a journey on the Trans-Siberian railway, he stopped with a chance American acquaintance in Moscow, where the two took an embarrassingly adolescent delight in circumventing authority. Still, his is an unusual and generally winning travel journal. (Apr.)