Paul Theroux

Paul Theroux is an American novelist and travel writer whose books combine close observation with an interest in distance, displacement and unfamiliar societies. The Great Railway Bazaar, published in 1975, established his reputation for travel writing, while his fiction includes Saint Jack, Picture Palace and The Mosquito Coast.

Theroux won the Whitbread Prize for Picture Palace and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for The Mosquito Coast. His work has also reached cinema and television through adaptations, including Saint Jack, The Mosquito Coast and London Embassy. The Royal Geographical Society awarded him its Royal Medal in 2015, and his papers are held by the Huntington Library.