Paul Theroux

Paul Theroux, born in 1941, American novelist and travel writer, known for works based on his experiences abroad. Theroux punctuates much of his fiction with personal commentary.

Born in Medford, Massachusetts, Theroux traveled to Italy after graduating from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst in 1963. For the next few years, Theroux taught English at the University of Urbino in Urbino, Italy, and was a member of the faculty of English at Soche Hill College in the southeast African country of Malawi. In 1965 he left Malawi to work in Uganda, where he met Trinidadian-born writer V. S. Naipaul, whose depressed but comic view of the world made a significant impression on the young Theroux. In Uganda, Theroux published his first novel, Waldo (1966), which tells a surreal story of a boy’s journey after leaving a school for delinquents.

In 1968 Theroux joined the Department of English at the University of Singapore, where he worked for three years. During this time he wrote a number of novels, including Fong and the Indians (1968) and Girls at Play (1969). Soon after the publication of Jungle Lovers (1971), which was based on his experiences in Malawi, Theroux moved with his wife and two children to England.

While living in England, Theroux wrote several highly praised works, including V. S. Naipaul: An Introduction to His Works (1972) and the novels Saint Jack (1973), The Great Railway Bazaar (1975), The Family Arsenal (1976), and The Mosquito Coast (1982). In 1986 The Mosquito Coast was made into a motion picture starring American actor Harrison Ford and British actor Helen Mirren. Theroux remained in England for several years, dividing his time between households there and in the United States, a situation that served as the subject of the novel My Secret Life (1989). Millroy the Magician (1993) tells the story of a magician and health-food sage through the eyes of a young girl whose slow sexual awakening provides much of the narrative drive of the novel. Kowloon Tong (1997) portrays two British citizens living in Hong Kong in 1997, when the British government returned the territory to the Chinese government. In 1998 Theroux published the controversial Sir Vidia’s Shadow, a sometimes bitter memoir about his longtime friendship with V. S. Naipaul and their falling-out. Theroux’s later fiction includes the Hotel Honolulu (2001), a collection of tales about the visitors and staff at a rundown resort hotel, and The Elephanta Suite (2007), three short novels that take place in modern-day India.