Novelist and travel writer, born in Medford, Massachusetts, USA. He studied at the University of Maine (195960), the University of Massachusetts (1963 BA), and Syracuse University (1963). He was a lecturer in English in Malawi as a member of the Peace Corps (19635) but was expelled on a charge of spying. He continued to teach in Uganda (19658) and in Singapore (196871), then settled in London. He wrote of the expatriate life, and won critical praise for his travel accounts, such as The Great Railway Bazaar: By Train Through Asia (1975) and The Old Patagonian Express (1979) - a genre which continued with Travelling the World (1990) and other books. His novels include Waldo (1969), Saint Jack (1973, filmed 1979), Picture Palace (1978, Whitbread), the highly acclaimed The Mosquito Coast (1981, James Tait Black, filmed 1987), Chicago Loop (1990), The Pillars of Hercules (1995), and Kowloon Tong (1997). Among later novels are Hotel Honolulu (2001) and Blinding Light (2005). He has also written short stories, plays, children's books, reviews, and works of criticism - notably, an appraisal of his teacher and mentor in V S Naipaul: An Introduction to His Works (1972).
Paul Edward Theroux (born April 10, 1941) is an American travel writer and novelist, whose best known work is The Great Railway Bazaar (1975), a travelogue about a trip he made by train from Great Britain through Europe and South Asia, then South-East Asia, up through East Asia, as far east as Japan, and then back across Russia to his point of origin.
Biography
Theroux was born in Medford, Massachusetts. During his tenure at Makerere University, Theroux began his three-decade friendship with novelist V.
Theroux currently lives in Hawaii. He has two sons with his first wife – Marcel Theroux and Louis Theroux – both of whom are writers and television presenters.
Literary work
His first novel, Waldo, was published during his time in Uganda and was moderately successful.
He moved to London in 1972, before setting off on an epic journey by train from Great Britain to Japan and back again.
Controversy
By including versions of himself, his family, and acquaintances in some of his fiction, Theroux has occasionally disconcerted his readers. The magazine later published a letter from Anne Theroux denying that Burgess was ever a guest in her home and expressing admiration for him, having once interviewed the real Burgess for the BBC: “I was dismayed to read in your August 7th edition a story … by Paul Theroux, in which a very unpleasant character with my name said and did things that I have never said or done.” When the story was incorporated into Theroux’s novel, My Other Life (1996), the wife character is renamed Alison and reference to her work at the BBC is excised.
Film adaptations
Saint Jack, Theroux's 1973 novel about an affable American panderer operating in Singapore during the Vietnam War, was filmed by director Peter Bogdanovich (1979). Chinese Box (1997), a film about the British handover of Hong Kong to the People's Republic of China, credits Theroux as a source for the story, based on themes he explores in his 1997 novel Kowloon Tong.
List of novels
| Waldo (1967) Fong And The Indians (1968) Murder In Mount Holly (1969) Girls At Play (1971) Jungle Lovers Sinning With Annie (1972) Saint Jack (1973) The Black House (1974) The Family Arsenal (1976) The Consul's File Picture Palace (1978) A Christmas Card London Snow World's End | The Mosquito Coast (1981) The London Embassy (1982) Half Moon Street (1984) Doctor Slaughter (1984) O-Zone (1986) The White Man's Burden My Secret History (1989) Chicago Loop (1990) Millroy The Magician (1993) My Other Life (1996) Kowloon Tong Hotel Honolulu Stranger At The Palazzo D'Oro Blinding Light (2006) |
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