Theroux, Paul (1941- )

American novelist and travel writer, known for novels based on his experiences abroad, which are punctuated with his personal commentary. Born in Medford, Massachusetts, Theroux traveled to Italy after graduating from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst in 1963. For the next few years, Theroux taught English at the University of Urbino in Urbino, Italy, and was a member of the faculty of English at Soche Hill College in the southeast African country of Malawi. In 1965 he left Malawi to work in Uganda, where he met Trinidadian writer V. S. Naipaul, whose depressed but comic view of the world made a significant impression on the young Theroux. In Uganda, Theroux published his first novel, Waldo (1966), which tells the surreal story of a boy's journey after leaving a school for delinquents. In 1968 Theroux joined the University of Singapore, where he worked for three years in the Department of English. Throughout this time, he wrote short articles, as well as a number of novels, including Fong and the Indians (1968) and Girls at Play (1969). Soon after the publication of Jungle Lovers (1971), which was based on his experiences in Malawi, Theroux moved with his wife and two children to England. During his time of residence in England Theroux wrote a dozen volumes of highly praised fiction, including V. S. Naipaul: An Introduction to his Works (1972); Saint Jack (1973); travel novels such as The Great Railway Bazaar (1975); and two of his most successful novels-The Family Arsenal (1976) and The Mosquito Coast (1982), which in 1986 was made into a motion picture starring American actor Harrison Ford. Theroux remained in England for several years, dividing his time between households there and in the United States, a situation that served as the subject of the novel My Secret Life (1989). Millroy the Magician (1993) compounds several of Theroux's favorite themes, telling the story of a magician and health-food sage through the eyes of a young girl whose slow sexual awakening provides much of the narrative drive of the novel.