Paul Theroux

Paul Edward Theroux (/θəˈruː/ thə-ROO; born April 10, 1941) is an American novelist and travel writer who has written numerous books, including the travelogue The Great Railway Bazaar (1975). Some of his works of fiction have been adapted as feature films. He was awarded the 1981 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for his novel The Mosquito Coast, which was adapted for the 1986 movie of the same name and the 2021 television series of the same name.

He is the father of English-American authors and documentary filmmakers Marcel and Louis Theroux, the brother of authors Alexander Theroux and Peter Theroux, and uncle of the American actor and screenwriter Justin Theroux.

Paul Theroux was born in Medford, Massachusetts, the third of seven children, and son of Catholic parents; his mother, Anne (née Dittami), was Italian American, and his father, Albert Eugene Theroux, was of French-Canadian descent. His mother was a former grammar school teacher and painter, and his father was a shoe factory leather salesman for the American Leather Oak company. Theroux was a Boy Scout and ultimately achieved the rank of Eagle Scout.

His brothers are Eugene, Alexander, Joseph and Peter. His sisters are Ann Marie and Mary.

Theroux was educated at Medford High School, followed by the University of Maine, in Orono (1959–60), and the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where he obtained a B.A. in English in 1963.

According to his older brother Alexander, Paul affects a "fake British accent", despite growing up in a working-class Boston suburb.

After finishing his university education, Theroux joined the Peace Corps in 1963 as a teacher in Malawi. In a later life interview, he described himself as an "angry and agitated young man" who felt he had to escape the confines of Massachusetts and a hostile U.S. foreign policy. At the time, the Peace Corps was relatively new, having sent its first volunteers overseas in 1961. Theroux helped a political opponent of Prime Minister Hastings Banda escape to Uganda. For this, Theroux was expelled from Malawi and thrown out of the Peace Corps in 1965. He was declared persona non grata by Banda in Malawi for sympathizing with Yatuta Chisiza. As a consequence, his later novel Jungle Lovers, which concerns an attempted coup in the country, was banned in Malawi for many years.

He moved to Uganda, in 1965, to teach English at Makerere University, where he also wrote for the magazine Transition. While at Makerere, Theroux began his friendship with Rajat Neogy, founder of Transition Magazine, and novelist V.S. Naipaul, then a visiting scholar at the university. During his time in Uganda, an angry mob at a demonstration threatened to overturn the car in which his pregnant wife was riding, and Theroux decided to leave Africa.