The Passenger, Chaney Kwak
The Passenger, Chaney Kwak
List: $14.95 | Sale: $10.47
Club: $7.47

The Passenger
How a Travel Writer Learned to Love Cruises & Other Lies from a Sinking Ship

Author: Chaney Kwak

Narrator: Keong Sim

Unabridged: 3 hr 33 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 06/08/2021


Synopsis

In March 2019, the Viking Sky cruise ship was struck by a bomb cyclone in the North Atlantic. Rocked by fifty-foot swells and forty-knot gales, the ship lost power and began to drift straight toward the notoriously dangerous Hustadvika coast in Norway. This is the suspenseful, harrowing, funny, touching story by one passenger who contemplated death aboard that ship.Chaney Kwak is a travel writer used to all sorts of mishaps on the road, but this is a first even for him: trapped on the battered cruise ship, he stuffs his passport into his underwear just in case his body has to be identified. As the massive cruise ship sways in surging waves, Kwak holds on and watches news of the impending disaster unfold on Twitter, where the ship’s nearly 1,400 passengers are showered with “thoughts and prayers.” Kwak uses his twenty-seven hours aboard the teetering ship to examine his family history, maritime tragedies, and the failing relationship back on shore with a man he’s loved for nearly two decades: the Viking Sky, he realizes, may not be the only sinking ship he needs to escape.The Passenger takes listeners on an unforgettable journey from the Norwegian coast to the South China Sea, from post-WWII Korea to pandemic-struck San Francisco. Kwak weaves his personal experience into events spanning decades and continents to explore the serendipity and the relationships that move us.

About Chaney Kwak

Chaney Kwak has been traversing the globe for more than a decade to write about food and travel. His work appears regularly in the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, as well as magazines such as Afar, Condé Nast Traveler, and Travel + Leisure. Kwak teaches nonfiction in the Stanford Continuing Studies program and lives in San Francisco.

About Keong Sim

Keong Sim is a Vietnamese-American actor, writer, and audiobook narrator. He has lent his talents to multiple projects, including Olympus Has Fallen, The Last Airbender, and Grey's Anatomy.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Meike on November 22, 2022

Cormac McCarthy, America's finest author of postmodern westerns, switches gears and gives us a kafkaesk pageturner about a salvage diver named Bobby Western (A+ for literary trolling, love it). But make no mistake: This novel still ponders American myth, the 89-year-old author creatively twists his......more

Goodreads review by Tom on June 15, 2022

What an absolute privilege to get to read this a few months ahead of publication. It was perhaps the best day I've had as a bookseller when this arrived in the post. It's seven years or more since I last read McCarthy. I had read The Road the year before and then devoured his entire catalogue in the......more

Goodreads review by Sam on November 11, 2022

It’s 1980 and a small plane crashes into the ocean killing all nine passengers aboard. But when salvage diver Robert Western enters the underwater plane, he finds only eight bodies. Then men in black start showing up to ask him: what did he see down there? Did he take anything from the wreckage? And......more

Goodreads review by Elyse on October 28, 2022

This is a strange book — I’m sitting in a Starbucks (waiting for a doctors appointment across the street)…. and just finished this ‘long’ book…. Tons of swearing—as in every other sentence— But it also fits! The best part of this oddball novel for me was the narrative- chatter- dialogues. Parts were h......more

Goodreads review by Ron on October 19, 2022

For the last 16 years, Cormac McCarthy’s swelling fan base has been circling, picking at crumbs of information about his next project. This month, the moment of unveiling has arrived with a tempest of publicity that’s sure to draw in even more readers. Prepare to be baffled. “The Passenger” exhibits M......more


Quotes

“A great read.” San Francisco Examiner

“Titanic clarity and humor that’s as dark as it is dry.” Travel + Leisure magazine

“Beautifully written…Keong Sim narrates the book in a serene, resonant voice, capturing the author’s wry humor and feelings of awe and fatalism. This is a marvelous book, superbly delivered.” Washington Post (audio review)

“For fans of The Perfect Storm, In the Heart of the Sea, and Bill Bryson on his sassiest days.” Afar Travel Magazine and Guide

“Thoughtful, exciting, and often hilarious.” New York Post

“A gripping adventure tale…a solemn reminder not to wait until we might be dying to think hard about life.” Minneapolis Star Tribune

“With its bare-bones honesty and dry, cynical humor, reveals that…it’s the little things that matter.“ Foreword Reviews (starred review)

“This powerful memoir about making tough choices and finding new directions will appeal to a variety of travel readers.” Library Journal

“A cruise gone terribly wrong frees a veteran travel writer to tell the truth—and Chaney Kwak, mordant and urbane, makes the most of the opportunity.” Ted Conover, author of The Routes of Man


Awards

  • Travel+Leisure Magazine Pick
  • Washington Post Best Audiobook