Paul Theroux 1941

Novelist and travel writer Paul Theroux was born in Medford, Massachusetts (1941). He went to the University of Massachusetts, which he said looked like it was made out of poison ivy and Tupperware, and dropped his pre-med plans to become an English major. After college, he went into the Peace Corps in Malawi, but he was thrown out for helping a poet who was a political opponent of the government and had escaped to Uganda. So Theroux went to Uganda himself, and the poet got him a job at Makerere University in Kampala, the capital city. And it was there that he met the novelist V.S. Naipaul, who was a visiting professor at the university, and became Theroux's mentor and friend for the next 30 years. Theroux started publishing novels, the first few set in Africa, including Waldo (1967) and Jungle Lovers (1971), and then Saint Jack (1973), about Singapore, where he taught for a few years. He went back to England, wrote a novel, dropped the manuscript off with his publisher, and that same day, he left for an epic journey from London to Tokyo and back again, all by train. He wrote about his experience in The Great Railway Bazaar (1975),his first travel book, which was also his first best-seller.