Paul Edward Theroux is an American travel writer and novelist, whose best known work of travel writing is perhaps The Great Railway Bazaar . He has 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 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 , was Italian American, and his father, Albert Eugene Theroux, was French-Canadian. His mother was a grammar school teacher and his father was a salesman for the American Leather Oak company. Theroux was a Boy Scout and ultimately achieved the rank of Eagle Scout. Theroux was educated at Medford High School, followed by the University of Maine, in Orono and the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where he obtained a B.A. in English in 1963.
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