Theroux, Paul

Theroux, Paul (1941- ), American novelist and travel-writer. Born in Medford, Massachusetts, Theroux travelled to Italy after graduating and then to Africa, where he worked as a Peace Corps teacher in a bush school in Malawi (from where he was deported for supposed “subversive activity”) and as a lecturer at Makerere University in Uganda. In Kampala he met V. S. Naipaul, whose depressed but comic view of the world made a significant impression on the young Theroux; although they later quarrelled and Theroux published a highly critical account of their 30-year friendship, Sir Vidia's Shadow, in 1998. In 1968, following the publication of his first novel Waldo in the previous year, he joined the University of Singapore, where he worked for three years in the Department of English. Throughout this time, he was publishing short stories and articles of journalism, and wrote a number of novels, among them Fong and the Indians and Girls at Play. Soon after the publication of Jungle Lovers (1971), which was based on his experiences in Malawi, he moved with his wife and two children to Dorset, where he wrote Saint Jack, before moving on to London. He remained resident in Britain for 17 years, during which time he wrote a dozen volumes of highly praised fiction. More recently, he has divided his time between households in Britain and the United States, which double life was the subject of the confessional novel My Secret Life. His best novels of the 1970s and 1980s include: The Family Arsenal, The Mosquito Coast, which was made into a successful feature film, and Doctor Slaughter. Millroy the Magician (1993) compounds several of his favourite themes, telling the story of a magnetic magician and health-food sage through the eyes of a young girl whose slow sexual awakening provides much of the narrative drive of the book. His latest novel is Hotel Honolulu (2001). Theroux has been justly praised, too, for many of his travel books, often centred on train journeys, as in The Great Railway Bazaar: By train through Asia (1975), and The Old Patagonian Express: By train through the Americas (1979). Rare glimpses of his home life are revealed in Fresh-Air Fiend: Travel Writings 1985-2000 (2000).