Jonathan Ra- ban, writing in the Saturday Review (2 February 1982), has called Theroux "the most gifted, most prodigal writer of his generation."
Theroux has been made a fellow of the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, the Royal Society of Literature, and the Royal Geographical Society. His First book of travel, The Great Railway Bazaar: By Train through Asia (1975), received several awards, including an American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters Award for literature (1977), and The Old Patagonian Express: By Train through the Americas (1979) and The Mosquito Coast (1981) each received American Book Award nominations in 1981 and 1983, respectively.
Born in Medford, Massachusetts, on 10 April 1941, Paul Edward Theroux is the third of seven children of Albert and Anne Dittami Theroux. His French-Canadian grandfather came to the United States in the late nineteenth century, and his mother's Italian parents arrived in the early part of the twentieth century. Theroux has attributed to his large working-class family—and to the dreary town of Medford, where he grew up—the sources for his becoming a writer, an inveterate traveler, and a sometime expatriate.
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