Paul Theroux

Paul Edward Theroux (born in Medford, Massachusetts, in 1941) is an American novelist and travel writer. Written in English, his work spans several decades and mixes fiction with accounts of long journeys around the world, which places him among the most widely read travel writers of his generation.

After graduating in English in 1963 from the University of Massachusetts Amherst, he joined the Peace Corps and taught in Malawi. He helped a political opponent of the government flee the country, and as a result he was expelled from Malawi and from the Peace Corps in 1965. He moved to Uganda to teach at Makerere University, then went to Singapore, where he taught for two years at the national university. In the early 1970s he settled in England, where he lived for seventeen years. His first novel, Waldo, appeared in 1967. With books such as Saint Jack (1973), set in Singapore and banned there for thirty years, he developed a wry, observant prose style.

His breakthrough came with The Great Railway Bazaar (1975), an account of a train journey from Britain to Japan and back, which launched a long run of travel books about trains, islands and roads. The Mosquito Coast (1981) won him the James Tait Black Prize and was filmed by Peter Weir with Harrison Ford in the lead. In Sir Vidia's Shadow (1998) he wrote about his friendship with the Nobel laureate V. S. Naipaul, and about how it later soured, after he had once praised Naipaul's work.

His legacy lies in blending fiction with close observation of the world, often with a critical eye on tourism and foreign aid. Several of his novels have been adapted for film and television. After his marriage ended in the early 1990s he returned to the United States, and he now divides his time between Hawaii and Cape Cod.