Novelist  │ Travel Writer │ Short Story Writer │ Critic
 
Paul Theroux is described by writer and friend Jonathan Raban as “utterly American, possessing all of those democratic, Yankee, can do qualities.”  True to form, Theroux is the quintessential explorer who has a talent for noticing the odd, compelling detail.
 

Readers depend on his uncompromising, sometimes brazen reportage; audiences remember him for his witty, acerbic asides and the tremendous breadth of literature he brings to bear. Theroux is an avid, impassioned reader and literary scholar. His relentless enthusiasm for the pursuit of new discoveries and an abiding respect and affection for his readers and audience are abundantly evident in person.  “…it’s like a friendship [with the reader],” Theroux says.  “...A bond develops if you write a lot of books.”
 
Such qualities have served him well in his long career, fueling a prodigious output of books—more than 47 works of travel writing, short-story collections, novels, criticism and children’s literature since he published his first book, the novel Waldo, in 1967.
 
“Paul Theroux is without peer as the merciless obituarist of colonialism. He knows his way matchlessly about the milieu where no one was ever at home….Theroux novels are neither apologia nor accusation; wit is his rare medium, and that lays bare both. He is a large, lively, outrageous talent.” (Nadine Gordimer)
 
Theroux received the American Academy and Institute of Arts & Letters Award for literature in 1977, the Whitbread Prize for his novel Picture Palace (1978), and the James Tait Black Award for The Mosquito Coast (1982), which was also nominated for the American Book Award along with his earlier travel book The Old Patagonian Express:  By Train through the Americas (1979).  His novels Saint Jack (1973), The Mosquito Coast, Doctor Slaughter (1984) and Half Moon Street (1984) have all been made into films; and his short-story collection London Embassy (1982) was adapted for a British mini-series in 1987.
 
Novels are Theroux’s preferred medium, but it is travel-writing that has gained him the most distinguished recognition.  With the publication of The Great Railway Bazaar: By Train through Asia (1975), and continuing with The Old Patagonian Express, Theroux established himself as America’s foremost travel writer.
 
Other travel books by Theroux include The Kingdom by the Sea (1983), Sailing Through China (1984), and Riding the Iron Rooster (1988) and more recently, Dark Star Safari, Overland from Cairo to Cape Town (2003), a revisit of Africa and his Peace-Corps past 40 years earlier.  His most recent work of fiction is the novel Blinding Light (Houghton Mifflin, 2005). 
 
Born in 1941, in Medford, Massachusetts, Theroux began his travels in earnest after he graduated from the University of Massachusetts in 1963.  He taught briefly in Urbino, Italy, before joining the Peace Corps in Malawi, Africa, and eventually ended up teaching English at the Makerere University in Kampala, Uganda.  This is where Theroux met and befriended the distinguished writer V.S. Naipaul; the eventual bitter disintegration of that bond was chronicled in Theroux’s Sir Vidia’s Shadow (1988).  In 1968, he moved to Singapore to teach at the University of Singapore and in 1971, he gave up teaching to write full time and England became his 17-year, on-again, off-again home.
 
The author of two children’s books and seven short-story collections, Theroux has published many articles in a variety of magazines, including Time, Atlantic Monthly, The New Yorker, GQ, Talk and Esquire.
 
“Theroux may be one of our most prolific travel writers, but he is also one of our best. The reason for this, I think, is his ability to convey the optimism of travel while refusing to tell lies about what he encounters.  You feel hopeful when you read him, and you feel that you're being told the truth, and that's a good enough reason to stay with him” (Caroline Sylge, New Statesman).
 
Selected Nonfiction Books

• Ghost Train to the Eastern Star: 28,000 Miles in Search of the Railway Bazaar (Houghton, 2008)
  
• Dark Star Safari: Overland from Cairo to Cape Town (Houghton, 2003)
• The Pillars of Hercules: A Grand Tour of the Mediterranean (Putnam, 1995)
• Riding the Iron Rooster: By Train through China (Putnam, 1989)
• The Kingdom by the Sea: A Journey around Great Britain (Houghton, 1985)
• The Old Patagonian Express: By Train through the Americas (Houghton, 1979)
• The Great Railway Bazaar: By Train through Asia (Houghton, 1975)

Selected Fiction Books

• The Elephanta Suite: Three Novellas (Houghton, 2007)
  
• Blinding Light (Houghton, 2005)
• Kowloon Tong (Houghton, 1997)
• My Other Life (Houghton, 1996)
• My Secret History (Putnam, 1989)
• Half Moon Street: Two Short Novels (Houghton, 1984)
• Doctor Slaughter (Hamish Hamilton, 1984)
• The Mosquito Coast (Houghton, 1982)
• Picture Palace (Houghton, 1978)
• Waldo (Houghton, 1967)

 
Awards
Fellow, Royal Society of Literature and the Royal Geographic Society in Britain
Thomas Cook Travel Book Prize
1983 Nominee, American Book Award for The Mosquito Coast
1981 Nominee, American Book Award for The Old Patagonian Express
1978 Whitbread Prize for Best Novel for Picture Palace
1977 American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters award for literature


To see an interview with Paul Theroux on Book Notes, click here.

To see an interview with Paul Theroux on Charlie Rose, click here.

To see an interview with Paul Theroux at the San Diego City Club's Great American Writers Series, click here.