Chaney Kwak’s in deep trouble.

“Thoughts and prayers.”

Trapped on a cruise ship without a working engine, inching closer to capsizing on the rocky Norwegian coast, travel writer Chaney Kwak watches armchair commentators wish him and the 1,372 other passengers all the best on social media.

And he never wanted to go on that cruise in the first place.

Praise for The Passenger

Blurbs

“Kwak’s fluid and evocative prose provides a gripping, moment-by-moment account… This powerful memoir about making tough choices and finding new directions will appeal to a variety of travel readers.”

— Library Journal

“The Passenger, with its bare-bones honesty and dry, cynical humor, reveals that when all is said and done, it’s the little things that matter: small acts of courage and kindness, words of love, and gratitude for the gift of another day.”

— Foreword Reviews (starred)

“With a mix of candor and cynicism… A down-to-earth, relatable examination of career and life choices.”

— Kirkus Reviews

“… a gripping story of survival, capitalism, maritime history—nothing less than a very modern adventure, and an instant classic of travel writing.”

— Alexander Chee, author of How to Write an Autobiographical Novel

“Down to earth, funny, irreverent, vulnerable, candid, The Passenger… subverts all the expected tropes of its narrative. By its final pages, it’s no longer the story of just one person, but a song of interconnectedness, a realization of all the other lives that make one’s little time on earth possible.”

– Paul Lisicky, author of Later: My Life at the Edge of the World, a 2020 NPR Best Book

“Kwak observes human beings with a precise, compassionate eye, moving from poignancy as he contemplates his place in the universe to biting social commentary aimed at the Twitter-storm of armchair storm chasers hoping to capitalize on his doom.”

– Lori Ostlund, author of After the Parade and winner of the Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction

“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 Newjack (Pulitzer Prize finalist)

“With incendiary humor and transcendent clarity, Kwak exhumes the crisis of our haunted relationships and goes beyond the headlines in every scrolling smartphone to demand a greater understanding of being alive.”

– E. J. Koh, author of The Magical Language of Others

In March 2019, the Viking Sky cruise ship was struck by a bomb cyclone in the North Atlantic. Rocked by 60-foot swells and 87-mile-per-hour gales, the ship lost power and began to drift straight toward the notoriously dangerous Hustadvika coast in Norway.
During his twenty-seven hours aboard the teetering ship, Kwak examines his family history, maritime tragedies, and the failing relationship back on shore: the Viking Sky, he realizes, may not be the only sinking ship he needs to escape.
*The Passenger* takes readers for 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.

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The Passenger (ISBN 978-1-56792-697-2) is distributed to the trade by Two Rivers Distribution, an Ingram brand. For more information, click here.