travel writer and novelist, whose best known work of travel writing is perhaps The Great Railway Bazaar
(1975). He has also published numerous works of fiction, some of which were made into feature films. He was awarded the 1981 James Tait Black Memorial Prize
for his novel The Mosquito Coast. He is also the father of British authors and documentary makers Louis Theroux
and Marcel Theroux
, the brother of authors Alexander Theroux
and Peter Theroux
, and uncle to the American actor and screenwriter Justin Theroux.
Theroux was born in Medford
, Massachusetts
, the son of Catholic parents; his mother, Anne (née Dittami), was Italian American
, and his father, Albert Eugene Theroux, was French-Canadian.
Travel is glamorous only in retrospect.
The realization that he is white in a black country, and respected for it, is the turning point in the expatriate’s career. He can either forget it, or capitalize on it. Most choose the latter.
The Peace Corps|Peace Corps is a sort of Howard Johnson’s|Howard Johnson’s on the main drag into maturity.
I have always disliked being a man. The whole idea of manhood in America is pitiful, in my opinion. This version of masculinity is a little like having to wear an ill-fitting coat for one's entire life (by contrast, I imagine femininity to be an oppressive sense of nakedness).
Hawaii is not a state of mind, but a state of grace.
Death is an endless night so awful to contemplate that it can make us love life and value it with such passion that it may be the ultimate cause of all joy and all art.