The Vanishing Point

From the bestselling novelist, travel writer, and “master of the short story” (NPR) comes a brilliant new collection. 
 
The stories in The Vanishing Point are both exotic and domestic, their settings ranging from Hawaii to Africa and New England. Each focuses on life’s vanishing points—a moment when seemingly all lines running through one’s life converge, and one can see no farther, yet must deal with the implications. With the insight, subtlety, and empathy that has long characterized his work, Theroux has written deeply moving stories about memory, longing, and the passing of time, reclaiming his status, once again, as a master of the form. 
 
‘The most gifted, most prodigal writer of his generation’ Jonathan Raban 
 
‘The most exciting contemporary practitioner of a literary tradition honed to elegantly crafted terseness by Somerset Maugham and Graham Greene. A terrific teller of tales and conjurer of exotic locales’ Sunday Times

Illuminating . . . A collection of wryly observed short stories from the octogenarian writer shines a light on the process of ageing . . . time hasn’t whittled away Theroux’s ability to amuse and provoke . . . These literary snapshots — a rowdy boyhood summer camp, a visit to a carnival stripper, an elegiac chess game — are poignant and well honed

A master of the short story . . . Unexpected endings and frequent insight make for a high strike rate, but perhaps best of all are those where Theroux reassumes the biographical mantle of Andre Parent he previously employed for his 1989 novel My Secret History . . . If this is the last round–up from a grand old man of letters, his final words are good and true ones

One of the best-known travel writers of our times . . . The title is not just that of a single story, but is the theme of all the tales here, in which characters find themselves at a crucial junction in their lives

Theroux has a way of slipping profound truths into his prose, the type that diligent readers copy into notebooks . . . His writing gives fiction life. He describes the things we all see but don’t mention in polite conversation, and he shines a light on thoughts we actively avoid

Paul Theroux has written many works of fiction and travel writing, including the modern classics The Great Railway Bazaar, The Old Patagonian Express, My Secret History and The Mosquito Coast. He won the Edward Stanford Award for Outstanding Contribution to Travel Writing 2020. Paul Theroux divides his time between Cape Cod and the Hawaiian islands.

The stories in The Vanishing Point are both exotic and domestic, their settings ranging from Hawaii to Africa and New England. Each focuses on life’s vanishing points—a moment when seemingly all lines running through one’s life converge, and one can see no farther, yet must deal with the implications. With the insight, subtlety, and empathy that has long characterized his work, Theroux has written deeply moving stories about memory, longing, and the passing of time, reclaiming his status, once again, as a master of the form.

Burma Sahib

'This novel is one of his finest in a long and redoubtable oeuvre' William Boyd, New York Times 
 
From renowned author Paul Theroux comes a fascinating, atmospheric novel inspired by George Orwell's years in Burma 
 
There is a short period in everyone's life when his character is fixed forever . . . ' George Orwell 
 
Eric Blair stood out amongst his fellow police trainees in 1920s Burma. Nineteen years old, unusually tall, a diffident loner fresh from Eton, after five years spent in the narrow colonial world of the Raj – a decaying system steeped in overt racism and petty class-conflict – he would emerge as the George Orwell we know. 
 
Drawing on all his powers of observation and imagination, Paul Theroux brings Orwell's Burma years to radiant life, tracing the development of the young man's consciousness as he confronts the social, racial and class politics and the reality of Burma beyond. Through one writer, we come to understand another - and see how what Orwell called 'five boring years within the sound of bugles' were in fact the years that made him. 
 
One of John Irving’s best books of the 21st century 
 
‘Thoroughly enjoyable . . . [Theroux’s] approach is like that of a skilful, subtle barrister who patiently lays out his evidence, gradually ensnaring the reader’ Times Literary Supplement 
 
'Always a terrific teller of tales and conjurer of exotic locales' Sunday Times 
 
'The most gifted, most prodigal writer of his generation' Jonathan Raban

Remarkable . . . Theroux, of course, has a parallel reputation as one of our greatest travel writers, and the Burma that he conjures in these pages is wonderfully present in lush and dense prose

Thoroughly engaging . . . Theroux is now in his eighties, and has written more than fifty books, but his writing is as potent as ever. A renowned travel writer, he recreates colonial Burma with loving accuracy, showing both its great beauty and the effects of its otherness on a homesick nineteen-year-old . . . meticulous and laudably authentic . . . [Theroux&rsquo;s] approach is like that of a skilful, subtle barrister who patiently lays out his evidence, gradually ensnaring the reader in the apprehension of how this might all have appeared to be necessary and acceptable . . . Burma Sahib is a work of profound relevance to the present day for the way in which it demonstrates how human beings become enslaved to systems, institutions and social codes

[An] ambitious dramatization . . . With piercing prose, Theroux lays bare the fraudulent and fiercely despotic nature of the British Empire. This brims with intelligence and vigor

Compelling. Theroux is always great with setting; here it&rsquo;s not just Burma but the mind of Orwell that he persuasively inhabits

Theroux&rsquo;s engrossing, suspenseful novel incisively maps the start of Blair&rsquo;s metamorphosis into George Orwell, resounding critic of malevolent power

Captivating . . . An engrossing story . . . Theroux, the accomplished travel writer, skillfully maps the lay of the land and transports his reader to one vividly depicted Burmese location after another . . . At the same time, Theroux, the adept novelist, ensures his reader is invested in his protagonist&rsquo;s journey &mdash; both his professional arc and his emotional trajectory

Theroux gives us something that Orwell couldn&rsquo;t: a sense of how current and relevant his concerns about imperialism remain from the viewpoint of the present . . . Theroux has woven a much bigger narrative around what we do know [about Orwell's time in Burma] and improvised imaginatively around the things we don&rsquo;t

A thoughtful, fully rounded portrait of a young man coming of age in a baroque, baffling and completely fascinating place and time. At aged 82, Theroux is still a curious, thrawn, uncompromising traveller and writer. Young Eric Blair would have admired that

There is a short period in everyone's life when his character is fixed forever . . . ' George Orwell 
 
Eric Blair stood out amongst his fellow police trainees in 1920s Burma. Nineteen years old, unusually tall, a diffident loner fresh from Eton, after five years spent in the narrow colonial world of the Raj – a decaying system steeped in overt racism and petty class-conflict – he would emerge as the George Orwell we know. 
 
Drawing on all his powers of observation and imagination, Paul Theroux brings Orwell's Burma years to radiant life, tracing the development of the young man's consciousness as he confronts the social, racial and class politics and the reality of Burma beyond. Through one writer, we come to understand another - and see how what Orwell called 'five boring years within the sound of bugles' were in fact the years that made him.

The Bad Angel Brothers

A deliciously dark, atmospheric novel about family and brotherhood from one of America's most distinctive writers 
 
There's sibling rivalry and then there's the relationship of brothers Cal and Frank Belanger. 
 
Enemies since childhood, the small town of Littleford just isn't big enough to hold them both. So, Cal strikes out for the world's wild places - a gifted geologist in search of gold and other precious minerals - leaving Frank to develop a successful career as the town's lawyer, fixer and local hero. 
 
But when Cal, newly rich and newlywed, returns to the town of his birth, Frank gives him the opposite of a brotherly welcome, leading to a series of betrayals and reprisals culminating in the ultimate plan: murder. 
 
A riveting tale of adventure, betrayal and the true cost of family bonds, The Bad Angel Brothers is a remarkable novel from one of American's most distinctive writers. 
 
'Laden with jealousy, betrayal and a mythic lust for vengeance' The New York Times 
 
'One of the most accomplished and worldly-wise writers of his generation' The Times

A manic tale of sibling rivalry that owes its small town setting mostly to John Cheever, and its seething resentment mostly to William Shakespeare . . . at once maundering and intensely emotionally violent

Searing and memorable . . . Theroux plays skillfully on reader sympathies until the bitter end, showing how a man's beliefs can make him turn to violence

American master Paul Theroux delivers a chilling psychological novel in The Bad Angel Brothers

Watch the magician's hands: Theroux has some powerful twists in his hat, and the language and compelling prose with which to offer them into the spotlight

Theroux's prose is so rich, his perceptions so many-layered, he involves us in a world that extends well beyond the physical limits of his novel

Paul Theroux has written many works of fiction and travel writing, including the modern classics The Great Railway Bazaar, The Old Patagonian Express, My Secret History and The Mosquito Coast. He won the Edward Stanford Award for Outstanding Contribution to Travel Writing 2020. Paul Theroux divides his time between Cape Cod and the Hawaiian islands.

There's sibling rivalry and then there's the relationship of brothers Cal and Frank Belanger. 
 
Enemies since childhood, the small town of Littleford just isn't big enough to hold them both. So, Cal strikes out for the world's wild places - a gifted geologist in search of gold and other precious minerals - leaving Frank to develop a successful career as the town's lawyer, fixer and local hero. 
 
But when Cal, newly rich and newlywed, returns to the town of his birth, Frank gives him the opposite of a brotherly welcome, leading to a series of betrayals and reprisals culminating in the ultimate plan: murder. 
 
A riveting tale of adventure, betrayal and the true cost of family bonds, The Bad Angel Brothers is a remarkable novel from one of American's most distinctive writers.

Under the Wave at Waimea

From renowned writer Paul Theroux comes a dazzling novel following a big-wave surfer in Hawaii as he confronts ageing, privilege and mortality 
 
'It was as if in surfing he was carving his name in water, invisibly, joyously.' 
 
Joe Sharkey knows he is passed his prime. 
 
Now in his sixties, the younger surfers around the breaks on the north shore of Oahu still revere him as the once-legendary 'Shark', but his sponsors have moved on, and Joe wonders what new future awaits him on the horizon. Uninterrupted quality time with the ocean, he hopes. 
 
Life has other plans. 
 
When he accidentally hits and kills a man near Waimea while drunk-driving, he fears he will never rebound. Under the direction of his stubbornly loyal girlfriend Olive, he throws himself into uncovering his victim's story. But what they find in Max Mulgrave is entirely unexpected: a shared history - and refuge in the sea. 
 
Set on the stunning Hawaiian coast, Theroux captures the glory and nostalgia of looking back at a rich and adventurous past, whilst learning to ride out life's next unexpected wave. 
 
'[Paul Theroux's] writing skills are disciplined and muscular, his ear as finely tuned as a musician's, his eye sharper than any razor' Daily Mail

Kaleidoscopic. Extraordinary. A frightening ride to the bottom of the soul of a man with a previously unexamined life. This is contemporary Hawaii as it's rarely evoked, with surfing strangely near its troubled heart

William Finnegan, author of “Barbarian Days”, winner of the Pulitzer Prize

Superb... Under the Wave at Waimea immerses you so elaborately in its watery world that you may start seeing surfing as just another guise for life itself... This probing tale of a man who's come undone and the strong, stark woman who thinks she can reassemble him is one of Theroux's best novels

Paul Theroux has written many works of fiction and travel writing, including the modern classics The Great Railway Bazaar, The Old Patagonian Express, My Secret History and The Mosquito Coast. He won the Edward Stanford Award for Outstanding Contribution to Travel Writing 2020. Paul Theroux divides his time between Cape Cod and the Hawaiian islands.

Joe Sharkey knows he is passed his prime. 
 
 Now in his sixties, the younger surfers around the breaks on the north shore of Oahu still revere him as the once-legendary 'Shark', but his sponsors have moved on, and Joe wonders what new future awaits him on the horizon. Uninterrupted quality time with the ocean, he hopes. 
 
 Life has other plans. 
 
 When he accidentally hits and kills a man near Waimea while drunk-driving, he fears he will never rebound. Under the direction of his stubbornly loyal girlfriend Olive, he throws himself into uncovering his victim's story. But what they find in Max Mulgrave is entirely unexpected: a shared history - and refuge in the sea. 
 
 Set on the stunning Hawaiian coast, Theroux captures the glory and nostalgia of looking back at a rich and adventurous past, whilst learning to ride out life's next unexpected wave.

A Mexican Road Trip

On the Plain of Snakes

WINNER OF THE EDWARD STANFORD AWARD FOR OUTSTANDING CONTRIBUTION TO TRAVEL WRITING 2020 
 
The master of contemporary travel writing, Paul Theroux, immerses himself in the beautiful and troubled heart of modern Mexico 
 
Nogales is a border town caught between Mexico and the United States of America. A forty-foot steel fence runs through its centre, separating the prosperous US side from the impoverished Mexican side. It is a fascinating site of tension, now more than ever, as the town fills with hopeful border crossers and the deportees who have been caught and brought back. And it is here that Paul Theroux will begin his journey into the culturally rich but troubled heart of modern Mexico. 
 
Moving through the deserts just south of the Arizona border, Theroux finds a place brimming with charm, yet visibly marked by both the US border patrol looming to the north and mounting discord from within. Attending local language and culinary schools, driving through the country and meeting its people, Paul Theroux gets under the skin of Mexico. 
 
From the writer praised for his 'curiosity and affection for humanity in all its forms' (New York Times Book Review), On The Plain of Snakes is an urgent and mesmerising exploration of a region in conflict. 
 
Praise for Paul Theroux: 
 
'As cool as Maugham... as observant, intuitive, wry, inventive and eloquent as Graham Greene' Sunday Times 
 
'Theroux's work remains the standard by which other travel writing must be judged' Observer 
 
'The world's most perceptive travel writer' Daily Mail 
 
'One of the most accomplished and worldly-wise writers of his generation' The Times

Filled with compassion and wit, this is a warm and insightful account of contemporary Mexican culture, politics and everyday life.

Theroux's work remains the standard by which other travel writing must be judged

[Theroux's] ability to sum up a people or a city in a few lines is undiminished

The world's most perceptive travel writer

[A] dark-edged but ultimately hopeful travelogue... Armchair travelers will find an astute, familiar guide in Theroux

Countless lovely descriptions of Mexico's landscapes and insights into the country's history and literature... Illuminating, literate, and timely-a must-read for those interested in what's going on inside Mexico

Nogales is a border town caught between Mexico and the United States of America. A 40-foot steel fence runs through its centre, separating the prosperous US side from the impoverished Mexican side. It is a fascinating site of tension, now more than ever, as the town fills with hopeful border crossers and the deportees who have been caught and brought back. And it is here that Paul Theroux will begin his journey into the culturally rich but troubled heart of modern Mexico. 
 
Mexico is a country that has captured literary imaginations from D. H. Lawrence and Graham Greene to Aldous Huxley. Now Paul Theroux, master of travel writing, immerses himself, attending local language and culinary schools, driving through the country, getting under its skin.

People and Places

Figures in a Landscape

A rich feast of travel writing, literary essays and fascinating interviews from Sunday Times bestselling travel author Paul Theroux 
 
'Wonderful... Evidence of both the breadth of Theroux's interests and his skill in bringing them to life' Sunday Times Culture 
 
Drawing together a fascinating body of writing from over 14 years of work, Figures in a Landscape ranges from profiles of cultural icons (Oliver Sacks, Elizabeth Taylor, Robin Williams) to intimate personal remembrances; from thrilling adventures in Africa to literary writings from Theroux's rich and expansive personal reading. Collectively these pieces offer a fascinating portrait of the author himself, his extraordinary life, restless and ever-curious mind. 
 
'Theroux's work remains the standard by which other travel writing must be judged' Observer 
 
'The world's most perceptive travel writer' Daily Mail

Wonderful... Evidence of both the breadth of Theroux's interests and his skill in bringing them to life

Drawing together classic Theroux pieces from the past 14 years, this new collection offers a comprehensive and deeply searching portrait of its acclaimed author - a kind of autobiography through work. 
 
Figures in a Landscape ranges from profiles of cultural icons (Oliver Sacks, Elizabeth Taylor, Robin Williams) to intimate personal remembrances; from thrilling adventures in Africa to literary writings from Theroux's rich and expansive personal reading. Collectively these pieces build up a fascinating portrait of Paul Theroux's restless, ever-curious mind.

Mother Land

'Downright hilarious... Like watching a slow-motion car crash. Theroux possesses a fabulously nasty sense of humour' Stephen King 
 
A riotously dysfunctional portrait of one all-American family and its diabolical matriarch - by one of America's most acclaimed writers 
 
Everyone in Cape Cod thinks that Mother is a wonderful woman: pious, hard-working, frugal. Everyone except her husband and seven children. To them she is a selfish and petty tyrant -- endlessly comparing her many living children to the one who died in childbirth, keeping a vice-like hold on her offspring even as they try to escape into adulthood. 
 
Welcome to Mother Land: a suffocating kingdom of parental narcissism. This is an engrossing, hilarious and heartbreaking portrait of a modern family -- the bickering, the conspiracies, and the drive to overcome the painful ties that bind. 
 
'Brilliantly depicts characters in pinpoint prickly prose' Guardian 
 
'Funny and wonderfully mean spirited' Saturday Review 
 
'The family dynamic has been rendered exceptionally well' Herald

Brilliantly depicts characters in pinpoint prickly prose

The family dynamic has been rendered exceptionally well

Everyone in Cape Cod thinks that Mother is a wonderful woman: pious, hard-working, frugal. Everyone except her husband and seven children. To them she is a selfish and petty tyrant -- endlessly comparing her many living children to the one who died in childbirth, keeping a vice-like hold on her offspring even as they try to escape into adulthood. 
 
Welcome to Mother Land: a suffocating kingdom of parental narcissism. This is an engrossing, hilarious and heartbreaking portrait of a modern family -- the bickering, the conspiracies, and the drive to overcome the painful ties that bind.

Four Seasons on Back Roads

Deep South

SUNDAY TIMES TOP TEN BESTSELLER 
 
Winner of the Stanford Dolman Lifetime Contribution to Travel Writing Award 2020 
 
Beloved travel writer Paul Theroux turns his attention to America, exploring the landscapes and communities of his homeland as an outsider for the first time 
 
For the past fifty years, Paul Theroux has travelled to the far corners of the earth - to China, India, Africa, the Pacific Islands, South America, Russia, and elsewhere - and brought them to life in his cool, exacting prose. In Deep South he turns his gaze to a region much closer to his home. 
 
Travelling through North and South Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee, Mississippi, Alabama and Arkansas, Paul Theroux writes of the stunning landscapes he discovers - the deserts, the mountains, the Mississippi - and above all, the lives of the people he meets. 
 
The South is a place of contradictions. There is the warm, open spirit of the soul food cafes, found in every town, no matter how small. There is the ruined grandeur of numberless ghostly towns, long abandoned by the industries that built them. There are the state gun shows and the close-knit,subtly forlorn tribe of people who attend and run them. Deep in the heart of his native country, Theroux discovers a land more profoundly foreign than anything he has previously experienced.

Publisher's description.  For the first time, renowned travel writer Paul Theroux turns his penetrating gaze homeward, exploring the extraordinary places and peoples of the American Deep South. From soul food and wide open roads to endemic poverty and simmering racial tension, he journeys to the heart of a vivid and mesmerising world.

His ability to sum up a people or a city in a few lines is undiminished

[Theroux] has the power to transport us and get under the skin of a place... the stories in Deep South make for a compelling listen

This engrossing book reminds us that despite the poverty, maybe because of it, everyone has a story to tell and it's the writer's job to bear such testimony

For the past fifty years, Paul Theroux has travelled to the far corners of the earth - to China, India, Africa, the Pacific Islands, South America, Russia and elsewhere - and brought them to life in his cool, exacting prose. 
 
In Deep South he turns his gaze to a region much closer to his home. Travelling through North and South Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee, Mississippi, Alabama and Arkansas, he writes of the stunning landscapes he discovers - the deserts, the mountains, the Mississippi - and above all, the lives of the people he meets.

The Mosquito Coast

Winner of the Stanford Dolman Lifetime Contribution to Travel Writing Award 2020 
 
The Mosquito Coast - winner of the James Tait Black Memorial Prize - is a breathtaking novel about fanaticism and a futile search for utopia from bestseller Paul Theroux. 
 
Allie Fox is going to re-create the world. Abominating the cops, crooks, junkies and scavengers of modern America, he abandons civilisation and takes the family to live in the Honduran jungle. There his tortured, messianic genius keeps them alive, his hoarse tirades harrying them through a diseased and dirty Eden towards unimaginable darkness. 
 
'Stunning. . . exciting, intelligent, meticulously realised, artful' Victoria Glendinning, Sunday Times 
 
'An epic of paranoid obsession that swirls the reader headlong to deposit him on a black mudbank of horror' Christopher Wordsworth, Guardian 
 
'Magnificently stimulating and exciting' Anthony Burgess 
 
American travel writer Paul Theroux is known for the rich descriptions of people and places that is often streaked with his distinctive sense of irony; his novels and collected short stories, My Other Life, The Collected Stories, My Secret History, The Lower River, The Stranger at the Palazzo d'Oro, A Dead Hand, Millroy the Magician, The Elephanta Suite, Saint Jack, The Consul's File, The Family Arsenal, and his works of non-fiction, including the iconic The Great Railway Bazaar are available from Penguin.

Allie Fox is going to re-create the world. Abominating the cops, crooks, junkies and scavengers of modern America, he abandons civilization and takes the family to live in the Honduran jungle. There his tortured, messianic genius keeps them alive, his hoarse tirades harrying them through a diseased and dirty Eden towards unimaginable darkness. 
 
'An epic of paranoid obsession that swirls the reader headlong to deposit him on a mudbank of horror' Christopher Wordsworth, Guardian.

Twenty Stories

Mr Bones

Mr Bones is a sparkling and darkly humorous collection of short stories by bestselling novelist and travel writer Paul Theroux. 
 
 A family watches, horrified, as their patriarch transforms into the wise-cracking lead of an old-timey minstrel show. An art collector gleefully destroys his most valuable pieces. A young artist devotes himself to a wealthy, malicious gossip, knowing that it's just a matter of time before she turns on him. 
 
In this new collection of short stories, Paul Theroux explores the tenuous leadership of the elite and the surprising revenge of the overlooked. He shows us humanity possessed, consumed by its own desires, always with his carefully honed eye and the subtle idiosyncrasies that bring his characters to life. 
 
 'As cool as Somerset Maugham . . . as observant, intuitive, wry, inventive and eloquent as Graham Greene' Sunday Times 
 
 'Theroux is fluent, witty and almost faultlessly able to deliver a satisfying story' Melvyn Bragg 
 
 'One of the most accomplished and worldly-wise writers of his generation' The Times

Plumbing the depths of eccentricity and violence swilling beneath the surface of ordinary American life, Theroux understands, often with devastating effect, how dramas both big and small can produce catastrophic and lasting psychological consequences

Twenty delicious tales . . . from the off, this collection had me grinning. Scattered with gems infused with Theroux's international knowledge

Quirky, unpredictable fun and pure literary entertainment

As cool as Somerset Maugham . . . as observant, intuitive, wry, inventive and eloquent as Graham Greene

Theroux is fluent, witty and almost faultlessly able to deliver a satisfying story

One of the most accomplished and worldly-wise writers of his generation

Always a terrific teller of tales and conjurer of exotic locales, he writes lean prose that lopes along at a compelling pace

With its unsettling strangeness, precisely drawn characters and geographical sweep, Mr Bones is a psychologically complex, vastly enjoyable and nuanced collection by a writer in complete control of his art

There's more than a whiff of Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness about these tales, by turns savage, funny, unsettling

Mr Bones is a series of characteristically dark and sharply focused snapshots from the world that Paul Theroux has observed - and ­invented

Mr Bones showcases the author's virtuoso storytelling abilities, as he tells stories of tricky situations, slippery personalities and unsettling motives

A family watches, horrified, as their patriarch transforms into the wise-cracking lead of an old-timey minstrel show. An art collector gleefully destroys his most valuable pieces. A young artist devotes himself to a wealthy, malicious gossip, knowing that it's just a matter of time before she turns on him. 
 
In this new collection of short stories, Paul Theroux explores the tenuous leadership of the elite and the surprising revenge of the overlooked. He shows us humanity possessed, consumed by its own desires, always with his carefully honed eye and the subtle idiosyncrasies that bring his characters to life.

Overland from Cape Town to Angola

The Last Train to Zona Verde

The Last Train to Zona Verde is Paul Theroux's compelling account of his final African journey. 
 
Heading north from Cape Town, through South Africa, Namibia, Botswana and Angola, Paul Theroux makes a final journey along Africa's western edge. The end of the line is the Congo but Theroux discovers that his trip's pleasures are tempered by a growing sense that the Africa which so long ago helped form him has vanished, along with the hopes of many of its people. Yet after 2,500 miles Theroux finds that though this will be his ultimate African adventure there are still surprises to be found by the traveller prepared to step off the beaten track. 
 
'A melancholic, farewell journey . . . Theroux does all this inimitably, and more, getting better the more detours he takes' Evening Standard 
 
'Hard to put down, brutal honesty. Theroux proves himself a sharp observer of human foibles and a master of pithy description. The book he has crafted out of his experiences packs plenty of bang' Spectator 
 
'As we worry about the future of the continent, there could be no better guide than Theroux . . . his sense that this is his final journey adds to the power' GQ 
 
'Excellent, barbed reportage' Independent 
 
'Probably the most important travel writer of his generation' Sunday Times 
 
Paul Theroux's books include Dark Star Safari, Ghost Train to the Eastern Star, Riding the Iron Rooster, The Great Railway Bazaar, The Elephanta Suite, A Dead Hand, The Tao of Travel and The Lower River. The Mosquito Coast and Dr Slaughter have both been made into successful films. Paul Theroux divides his time between Cape Cod and the Hawaiian islands.

Having travelled down the right-hand side of Africa in Dark Star Safari, Paul Theroux sets out this time from Cape Town, heading northwards in a new direction, up the left-hand side, through South Africa and Namibia, to Botswana, then on into Angola, heading for the Congo, in search of the end of the line. 
 
Journeying alone through the greenest continent, Theroux encounters a world increasingly removed from both the intineraries of tourists and the hopes of post-colonial independence movements. After the Cape Town townships, the Namibian bush and the browsing cattle of the great sunbaked heartland of the savannah, he crosses "the Red Line" into a different Africa: of heat and poverty, and of roadblocks, mobs and anarchy. 
 
A final African adventure from the writer whose gimlet eye and effortless prose have brought the world to generations of readers, The Last Train to Zona Verde is Paul Theroux's ultimate safari.

The Lower River

Award-winning writer Paul Theroux draws upon personal experience of living in Malawi in his eye-opening novel, about one man's return to an Africa he no longer recognises, The Lower River. 
 
Decades ago Massachusetts salesman Ellis Hock spent four years in Africa - and the continent has never left him. So when his wife walks out and his business goes belly up, Ellis turns back to the one place in which he briefly found happiness. 
 
Yet returning to the village of Malabo shocks him. The school he built is a ruin. The people he remembers are poor, apathetic, hostile. The country labours as if under a great, invisible burden. However, Ellis is determined. This is his escape, a paradise regained. 
 
But escape can be a snare, a trap for the unwary . . . 
 
The Lower River is a hypnotic, compelling and brilliant return to a terrain no one has ever written better about than Paul Theroux: the tragic stage of modern Africa, AIDS-ravaged and despairing in the face of creeping consumerism, greed and dependence. 
 
'Remarkable, admirable, riveting, heartbreaking. A masterly, moving portrait of how Africa ensnares and enchants' Guardian 
 
'Terrific writing. Theroux's senses are always on full alert' Evening Standard 
 
'Powerful, vivid, shocking' The Times 
 
'Theroux invests this very 21st-century journey into the heart of ennui with a caustic bite, like the snakes that pop up throughout' Metro 
 
'The sense of menace is masterful. Theroux has never written a better novel' Sunday Telegraph 
 
 
American travel writer Paul Theroux is known for the rich descriptions of people and places that is often streaked with his distinctive sense of irony; his novels and collected short stories, My Other Life, The Collected Stories, My Secret History, The Stranger at the Palazzo d'Oro, A Dead Hand, Millroy the Magician, The Elephanta Suite, Saint Jack, The Consul's File, The Family Arsenal, The Mosquito Coast, and his works of non-fiction, including the iconic The Great Railway Bazaar are available from Penguin.

Decades ago Massachusetts salesman Ellis Hock spent four years in Africa - and the continent has never left him. So when his wife walks out and his business goes belly up, Ellis turns back to the one place in which he briefly found happiness. 
 
Yet returning to the village of Malabo shocks him. The school he built is a ruin. The people he remembers are poor, apathetic, hostile. The country labours as if under a great, invisible burden. However, Ellis is determined. This is his escape, a paradise regained. 
 
But escape can be a snare, a trap for the unwary . . .

The Tao of Travel

One for the armchair traveller and the adventurer who has scaled K2 and swum the Bosphorus. Like a long train journey, once you settle in there's a lot to enjoy. Gripping

Dazzling . . . like someone panning for gold, Theroux reread hundreds of travel classics and modern works, shaking out the nuggets. A source of inspiration for prospective travelers and a guide to how, in Theroux's view, to travel properly

One of the best introductions to travelling and travel writing

A compendium of travel writing from a master traveller 
 
Paul Theroux celebrates fifty years of wandering the globe by collecting the best writing on travel from the books that shaped him, as a reader and a traveller. Part philosophical guide, part miscellany, part reminiscence, The Tao of Travel enumerates 'The Contents of Some Travellers' Bags' and exposes 'Writers Who Wrote About Places They Never Visited'; tracks extreme journeys in 'Travel As An Ordeal' and highlights some of 'Travellers' Favourite Places'. Excerpts from the best of Theroux's own work are interspersed with selections from travellers both familiar and unexpected, including Vladimir Nabokov, Henry David Thoreau, Graham Greene, Ernest Hemingway and more. 
 
The Tao of Travel is a unique tribute to the pleasures and pains of travel in its golden age.

Travel Writings, 1985-2000

Fresh-air Fiend

In this collection of Theroux's shorter travel writings, he writes of sweatshops in Dongguan, massage parlours in Kowloon, jellyfish in Palau and bomb craters on Chrsitmas Island. 
 
Whether visiting the King of the Lozis at a bend in the Zambezi river or crossing the United States in a railway car of unsurpassable luxury, relating his experiments with biblical dieting, or detailing the illneses and diseases suffered in half a lifetime of travel, Paul Theroux, the fresh-air fiend himself, is always an entertaining and honest guide. 
 
 Full of startling encounters and memorable scenes, fascinating and sometimes bizarre locations, and enlightening musings on themes as various as sexual attraction and the point of travel writing itself, this extensive collection of his shorter pieces is a rich and remarkable book from a superb writer. 
 
'Theroux remains the standard by which other travel writing must be judged' Observer 
 
Paul Therouxhas written many works of fiction and travel writing, including the modern classic The Great Railway, Bazaar, The Old Patagonian Express, My Secret History and The Mosquito Coasts. Paul Theroux divides his time between Cape Cod and the Hawaiian islands.

Whether visiting the King of the Lozis at a bend in the Zambezi river or crossing the United States in a railway car of unsurpassable luxury, relating his experiments with biblical dieting, or detailing the illneses and diseases suffered in half a lifetime of travel, Paul Theroux, the fresh-air fiend himself, is always an entertaining and honest guide. 
 
Full of startling encounters and memorable scenes, fascinating and sometimes bizarre locations, and enlightening musings on themes as various as sexual attraction and the point of travel writing itself, this extensive collection of his shorter pieces is a rich and remarkable book from a superb writer.

The Consul's File

Award-winning writer Paul Theroux takes us on a journey through small town Malaysia through the eyes of the exuberant Spencer Savage in his breathtaking novel The Consul's File. 
 
Spencer Savage, a young American consul, is posted to Ayer Hitam, a small Malaysian town, in the 1970s. Told to close down this remote outpost in the sweltering jungle, he instead finds himself drawn to the many characters he meets among the Malays, Indians, Japanese, Chinese and the clubbable expat Brits. 
 
Through his eyes we see the rich tapestry of multi-ethnic life in post-colonial Malaysia, from adultery to murder, from ghost stories to the murky waters of diplomatic politics. 
 
It is a brilliant portrait of a vanished time, a lost landscape and scattered peoples. 
 
'A cool and witty sequence. . . a polished and professional performance' Guardian 
 
'Theroux's writing is at its most adventurous in The Consul's File. There is no book I can compare this to: Mr Theroux's artistry is individual, serene, yet also grainy with fierce truths' The Times 
 
American travel writer Paul Theroux is known for the rich descriptions of people and places that is often streaked with his distinctive sense of irony; his novels and collected short stories, My Other Life, The Collected Stories, My Secret History, The Lower River, The Stranger at the Palazzo d'Oro, A Dead Hand, Millroy the Magician, The Elephanta Suite, Saint Jack, The Family Arsenal, The Mosquito Coast, and his works of non-fiction, including the iconic The Great Railway Bazaar are available from Penguin.

Spencer Savage, a young American consul, is posted to Ayer Hitam, a small Malaysian town, in the 1970s. Told to close down this remote outpost in the sweltering jungle, he instead finds himself drawn to the many characters he meets among the Malays, Indians, Japanese, Chinese, and the clubbable expat Brits. 
 
Through his eyes we see the rich tapestry of multi-ethnic life in post-colonial Malaysia, from adultery to murder, from ghost stories to the murky waters of diplomatic politics. 
 
It is a brilliant portrait of a vanished time, a lost landscape and scattered peoples.

Saint Jack

Award-winning writer Paul Theroux explores the darker underside of the community of expatriates in South-East Asia in his compelling and strikingly honest novel Saint Jack. 
 
Jack Flowers, saint or sinner, caught a passing bumboat into Singapore and got a job as a water-clerk to a Chinese ship chandler. Now, on the side, he offers girls (indeed 'anything, anything at all') to tourists, sailors, residents and expatriates, but he is haunted by his lack of worldly success and his fifty-three years weight heavily on him. So when he agrees to act as blackmailer for the faintly sinister American Edwin Shuck in a plot against a general from Vietnam, he has high, not to mention wild, hopes of triumph. 
 
These are the outrageous confessions of an ingenious conman in the seedy and unforgettable world of expatriates amidst imperial ruins. 
 
'A witty, subtle, often moving self-portrait of a memorable rogue' Observer 
 
'Theroux's prose it rich, his perceptions so many-layered, he involves us in a world that extends well beyond the physical limits of his novel' The Times 
 
American travel writer Paul Theroux is known for the rich descriptions of people and places that is often streaked with his distinctive sense of irony; his novels and collected short stories, My Other Life, The Collected Stories, My Secret History, The Lower River, The Stranger at the Palazzo d'Oro, A Dead Hand, Millroy the Magician, The Elephanta Suite, The Consul's File, The Family Arsenal, The Mosquito Coast, and his works of non-fiction, including the iconic The Great Railway Bazaar are available from Penguin.

Jack Flowers, saint or sinner, caught a passing bumboat into Singapore and got a job as a water-clerk to a Chinese ship chandler. Now, on the side, he offers girls (indeed 'anything, anything at all') to tourists, sailors, residents and expatriates, but he is haunted by his lack of worldly success and his fifty-three years weigh heavily on him. So when he agrees to act as blackmailer for the faintly sinister American, Edwin Shuck, in a plot against a general from Vietnam, he has high, not to mention wild, hopes of triumph. 
 
These are the outrageous confessions of an ingenious con man in the seedy and unforgettable world of expatriates amidst imperial ruins.

Millroy the Magician

Award-winning writer Paul Theroux tells a bewitching tale of circus magic and hypnotism which seems to hide a more sinister objective in his exquisite novel Millroy the Magician. 
 
Fourteen-year-old Jilly Farina walks into the tent at the County Fair and finds her life transformed. Fixing her with her hypnotic gaze, Millroy the Magician performs astonishing miracles. When she is later magicked into his trailer and Millroy promised to train her as his assistant, Jilly feels safe for the first time her her short life. 
 
But Millroy is more than a mere stage-show magician. A vegetarian and health fanatic, a possessor of healing and hypnotic powers, Millroy is on a mission to change the eating habits og an entire nation. And through Jilly he has found the strength to preach his evangelical message. With Millroy's messianic fervour ever growing, Jilly begins to have doubts - but Millroy knows that without Jilly there will be no magic. . . 
 
'Brilliantly done. Theroux's best book for a very long time' Jonathan Raban, The Times Literary Supplement 
 
'Fresh and unexpected...among Theroux's best' Philip Hensher, Guardian 
 
'Magical' Daily Telegraph 
 
American travel writer Paul Theroux is known for the rich descriptions of people and places that is often streaked with his distinctive sense of irony; his novels and collected short stories, My Other Life, The Collected Stories, My Secret History, The Lower River, The Stranger at the Palazzo d'Oro, A Dead Hand, The Elephanta Suite, Saint Jack, The Consul's File, The Family Arsenal, The Mosquito Coast, and his works of non-fiction, including the iconic The Great Railway Bazaar are available from Penguin.

Fourteen-year-old Jilly Farina walks into the tent at the County Fair and finds her life transformed. Fixing her with his hypnotic gaze, Millroy the Magician performs astonishing miracles. When she is later magicked into his trailer and Millroy promises to train her as his assistant, Jilly feels safe for the first time in her short life. 
 
But Millroy is more than a mere stage show magician. A vegetarian and health fanatic, a possessor of healing and hypnotic powers, Millroy's mission is to change the eating habits of an entire nation. And through Jilly he has found the strength to preach his evangelical message. 
 
With Millroy's messianic fervour ever growing, Jilly begins to have doubts - but Millroy knows that without Jilly there will be no magic . . .

A Friendship Across Five Continents

Sir Vidia's Shadow

Sir Vidia's Shadow is a book that chronicles bestselling author Paul Theroux's long friendship with writer V.S Naipaul from its beginning to untimely end with both funny and moving moments and stark honesty. 
 
'Both unputdownable and utterly engaging' Jonathan Raban, The Times Literary Supplement 
 
'I started reading Theroux Sir Vidia's Shadow, the story of his friendship with V.S. Naipaul over thirty years and five continents. I couldn't, as they say, put it down. I don't know of a more revealing study of the peculiar nature of friendship between professional writers, an unstable compound of empathy, solidarity and rivalry' David Lodge, Guardian Books of the Year 
 
'Thoroughly compelling. We can call it a memoir, or a biographical sketch, but it has more in it - more candour, more intensity, more angry puzzlement - than we would normally expect from either of these genres' Sunday Telegraph 
 
'The portrait of Naipaul that emerged is uproariously believable. . . most people are damaged human beings. What distinguishes writers is that can turn their damage into something life-enhancing. That is what Sir Vidia's Shadow resplendently does' John Carey, Sunday Times 
 
American travel writer Paul Theroux is known for the rich descriptions of people and places that is often streaked with his distinctive sense of irony; his other non-fiction titles, Riding the Iron Rooster, The Happy Isles of Oceania, Sunrise with Seamonsters, The Kingdom by the Sea, The Tao of Travel, Ghost Train to the Eastern Star, The Old Patagonian Express, The Great Railway Bazaar, Dark Star Safari, Fresh-air Fiend, The Pillars of Hercules, and his novels and collections of short stories, including the James Tait Black Memorial Prize winner The Mosquito Coast are available from Penguin.

'Both unputdownable and utterly engaging' Jonathan Raban, The Times Literary Supplement 
 
'I started reading Theroux's Sir Vidia's Shadow, the story of his friendship with V. S. Naipaul over thirty years and five continents - its origins, development, and sad, enigmatic termination. I couldn't, as they say, put it down. I don't know of a more revealing study of the peculiar nature of friendship between professional writers, an unstable compound of empathy, solidarity and rivalry. Theroux's portrait of Naipaul . . . may be [his] finest literary creation' David Lodge, Guardian Books of the Year 
 
'Thoroughly compelling. We can call it a memoir, or a biographical sketch, but it has more in it - more candour, more intensity, more angry puzzlement - than we would normally expect from either of these genres. I can think of no other book that renders in such merciless detail a still-living public figure' Sunday Telegraph

World's End; Sinning with Annie; Jungle Bells; the Consul's File; the London Embassy;

The Collected Stories

The Collected Stories is a collection of award-winning writer Paul Theroux's short stories, each of which brimming with astute observations and sharp wit that will captivate readers the world over. 
 
'[Theroux] makes and remakes his own world...the smell, sound, sight of his scenes is always strong, even pungent; and, even more, his dialogue is powerfully but also effortlessly accurate' Sunday Telegraph 
 
'Theroux willingly explores the blighted territory of a failing marriage; the tangled jungle of a mad poet's secret anti-Semitism; the belated sexual guilt of a Hindu. . . a book of many and varied pleasures; to read it is to feel alert, curious, adventurous' Observer 
 
'Paul Theroux's writing is impeccable and thoughtfully entertaining. . . his artistry is individual, serene, yet also grainy with fierce truths' The Times 
 
'One needs energy to keep up with the extraordinary, productive restlessness of Paul Theroux. . . [He is] the most gifted, most prodigal writer of his generation' Jonathan Raban 
 
'You close the book feeling you have read a single big narrative rather than a series of short ones. . . As a short-story writer, he makes a terrific novelist' Sunday Times 
 
American travel writer Paul Theroux is known for the rich descriptions of people and places that is often streaked with his distinctive sense of irony; his novels and collected short stories, My Other Life, My Secret History, The Lower River, The Stranger at the Palazzo d'Oro, A Dead Hand, Millroy the Magician, The Elephanta Suite, Saint Jack, The Consul's File, The Family Arsenal, The Mosquito Coast, and his works of non-fiction, including the iconic The Great Railway Bazaar are available from Penguin.

'No one ever sees me write. One of the triumphs of fiction is that it is created in the dark. It leaves my house in a plain wrapper, with no bloodstains. Unlike me, my stories are whole and indestructible.'  Theroux's canvas stretches from London to South-East Asia, from Boston to Paris, from Africa to Eastern Europe and from Moscow to the tropics in this vibrant collection. Full of suspense and the unexpected, the stories delve into the worlds of a vast spectrum of characters and display throughout a flair that shows Theroux to be a master of the form.

A Novel

My Other Life

My Other Life is a compelling collection of short memoirs that blur the lines between biography and fiction as award-winning writer Paul Theroux imagines what his life would have been like had he made different choices. 
 
A writer's epic account of another life, of other choices - of turning fact into extraordinary fiction... 
 
'A memoir; a collection of short stories; an assemblage of fables; an anthology of Theroux: a book in which he is everywhere present, as himself and as someone other...Endlessly inventive, beguiling, provocative and insidiously readable' Sunday Telegraph 
 
'Evocative, painstaking, comic, even tender, brilliant. Follows the outline of Theroux's life - teaching in Africa and Singapore, prosperity and marriage in rain-blackened London, catastrophe then flight to the Pacific's sunnier shores - each chapter is plotted as a dramatic confrontation' Guardian 
 
'A great pleasure and a bit of a tease. Theroux is fluent, witty and almost faultlessly able to deliver a satisfying story' Melvyn Bragg, Literary Review 
 
American travel writer Paul Theroux is known for the rich descriptions of people and places that is often streaked with his distinctive sense of irony; his novels and collected short stories, The Collected Stories, My Secret History, The Lower River, The Stranger at the Palazzo d'Oro, A Dead Hand, Millroy the Magician, The Elephanta Suite, Saint Jack, The Consul's File, The Family Arsenal, The Mosquito Coast, and his works of non-fiction, including the iconic The Great Railway Bazaar are available from Penguin

The fictional narrator of these memoirs, a man of many different guises, has reconstructed his past, giving it wit and life, tragedy and pathos, and imposed an order on it through careful editing. Life, it seems, has no apparent plot and so it can seem messier than fiction; sometimes it seems as if our hero is leading many different, separate lives . . . 
 
'A memoir; a collection of short stories; an assemblage of fables; an anthology of Theroux: a book in which he is everywhere present, as himself and as someone other . . . Endlessly inventive, beguiling, provocative and insidiously readable' Sunday Telegraph

Paul Theroux

Like me, Paul Theroux is a fellow New Englander who has traveled - we’ve both lived a lot of our eighty four years outside our birth country. We both know that before you can be a good writer, you have to be a keen observer

True North made me, in my depths, long to be back in Canada

The most gifted, most prodigal writer of his generation

One of the best-known travel writers of our times

A vastly diverse and geographically scattered nation of forty million people, Canada is now threatened with annexation as the 51st state by the US President, beyond the longest undefended border in the world. This threat has had the effect of unifying the nation, inspiring patriotism, and encouraging the normally laconic Canadians to be forthcoming, ideal for a traveller with a gift for listening. 
 
For Theroux, this journey is also personal: his ancestor Antoine Theroux left Gascony in 1693 to become a pioneer in Nouvelle France and to settle in the small village of Yamaska, where many Therouxs still live and thrive. He recounts the riveting story of Antoine, illuminating the deeper, and often darker, history of Canada, before hitting the road from Yamaska, to explore the length and breadth of the country. 
 
From the farthest east in Newfoundland to the west in Vancouver, Theroux travels the highways linking Quebec, Montreal, Toronto and the huge cities of the prairies – an archipelago of urban islands, surrounded by vast, often pristine landscapes. Along the way he meets farmers and fishermen, writers and activists, new immigrants and old timers – each a vital part of this True North, each hoping for it to remain strong and free. 
 
With his remarkable gift for description and narrative, and his zest for the open road, Paul Theroux remains the most compelling, searching and evocative of travel writers.

Paul Theroux

Praise for True North

Like me, Paul Theroux is a fellow New Englander who has traveled - we’ve both lived a lot of our eighty four years outside our birth country. We both know that before you can be a good writer, you have to be a keen ...

True North made me, in my depths, long to be back in Canada

One of our greatest travel writers

Like me, Paul Theroux is a fellow New Englander who has traveled - we’ve both lived a lot of our eighty four years outside our birth country. We both know that before you can be a good writer, you have to be a keen ...

True North made me, in my depths, long to be back in Canada

One of our greatest travel writers

Like me, Paul Theroux is a fellow New Englander who has traveled - we’ve both lived a lot of our eighty four years outside our birth country. We both know that before you can be a good writer, you have to be a keen ...

True North made me, in my depths, long to be back in Canada

One of our greatest travel writers

Books by Paul Theroux

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