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Paul Theroux |
About Paul Theroux
An Interview with Paul Theroux
More About Paul Theroux
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Paul Theroux was born and raised in
Massachusetts. One of seven children, he developed an early interest in books and writing. The
written word, he quickly learned, offered a special kind of privacy, rare in so large a family, and
was the most forceful and final way to express his ideas. Since that early discovery, Theroux has
continued to write and to refine his considerable talent.
Theroux graduated from the University of Massachusetts and did graduate work at Syracuse
University. In 1963 he joined the Peace Corps, serving as a teacher in Africa. He was assigned
to the small country of Malawi, which achieved independence during his residency. Staying
there for five years, he left in 1968 to assume a teaching position at the University of Singapore.
Theroux's first book, the novel Waldo, was published in 1966. Over the next five
years he published three more novels: Fong and the Indians, Girls at Play and
Jungle Lovers. All three are set in Africa, catching vivid, convincing detail of the
hapless collision of Western appetites and ideals with the fragile, uncertain, impoverished new
world of Africa. "Paul Theroux," the South African novelist Nadine Gordimer has written, "is
without peer as the merciless obituarist of colonialism. He knows why his way matchlessly
about the milieu where no one was ever at home. . . . Theroux's novels are neither apologia nor
accusation; wit is his rare medium, and that lays bare both. He is a large, lively, outrageous
talent."
Theroux resigned his position at the University of Singapore in 1971 to devote himself
entirely to writing. In the years since, his output has been both prodigious and diverse. He has
published the novels Saint Jack, The Black House, The Family Arsenal,
Picture Palace, The Mosquito Coast, O-Zone, My Secret
History, Chicago Loop and Millroy the Magician. He has also published
four collections of short stories: Sinning With Annie, The Consul's File,
World's End and The London Embassy; and a book of two novellas entitled
Half Moon Street. He has written two books for young readers, A Christmas Card
and London Show, and published a critical study of the works of West Indian
novelist V.S. Naipaul.
Paul Theroux has traveled more widely than almost any other major writer of his generation.
His explorations of the remote, rough corners of the world, and of the complex, troubled nations
of Africa, Asia, and Central and South America have been reflected both in the brilliantly
observed, fresh, compelling setting of his fiction and in his celebrated bestselling books of
journeys. Among his widely read travel books are The Great Railway Bazaar, The
Old Patagonian Express, The Kingdom by the Sea, the bestselling Riding the
Iron Rooster and The Happy Isles of Oceania. On October 17, 1995, G.P. Putnam's
Sons published The Pillars of Hercules: A Grand Tour of the Mediterranean.
Paul Theroux divides his time between Hawaii and Cape Cod.
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