Paul Theroux

Paul Theroux is an American writer. He was born on April 10, 1941 in Medford, Massachusetts and attended the University of Maine and the University of Massachusetts Amherst. After receiving a BA in English in 1963, Theroux joined the Peace Corps as a teacher in Malawi but was expelled from the country in 1965 for his opposition to Prime Minister Hastings Banda. He fled to Uganda, where he taught English at Makerere University and frequently contributed poems to the literary magazine Transition, also befriending the magazine’s founder and editor, Rajat Neogy. In 1968, he moved to Singapore to teach at the National University of Singapore before moving to England in 1971. He finally returned to the United States in 1990. Theroux has written 29 novels, 20 travel books, and numerous short stories. He has also won several awards for his writing, including the Patron’s Medal from the Royal Geographical Society, the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, the American Academy and Institute of Arts & Letters Award for literature, and the Whitbread Prize for Best Novel.