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Theroux was born in Medford , Massachusetts . After he finished his university education, he joined the Peace Corps and taught in Malawi . While working there, he helped a political opponent of Hastings Banda escape to Uganda , for which he was expelled from Malawi and thrown out of the Peace Corps. He then moved to Uganda to teach at Makerere University there. During his tenure at Makerere University, Theroux began his three-decade friendship with novelist V.S. Naipaul , then a visiting scholar at the university. When Uganda under Idi Amin became an unpleasant place to live, he moved again to Singapore . His first Novel , ''Waldo'', was published during his time in Uganda and was moderately successful. He published several more novels over the next few years including ''Fong and the Indians'' and ''Jungle Lovers''. On his return to Malawi many years later, he found that this later novel, which was set in that country, was still banned, a story told in his book ''Dark Star Safari''. He moved to London in 1972 before setting off on an epic journey by train from Great Britain to Japan and back again. His account of this journey was published as ''The Great Railway Bazaar'', his first major success as a travel writer. He has since written a number of other travel books, including descriptions of travelling by train from Boston to Argentina (''The Old Patagonian Express''), visiting China (''Riding the Iron Rooster''), and travelling from Cairo to Cape Town (''Dark Star Safari''). As a traveller he is noted for his rich descriptions of people and places, laced with a heavy streak of irony often attributed as Misanthropy . Other non-fiction by Theroux includes ''Sir Vidia's Shadow'', an account of his personal and professional friendship with Nobel laureate V.S. Naipaul that ended abruptly after thirty years. By including versions of himself, his family, and acquaintances in some of his fiction, Theroux has occasionally disconcerted his readers. ''A. Burgess, Slightly Foxed: Fact and Fiction'', a story originally published in '' The New Yorker '' magazine (August 7, 1995), describes a dinner at the narrator's home with author Anthony Burgess (February 25, 1917 – November 22, 1993) and a book-hoarding philistine lawyer who nags the narrator for for an introduction to the great writer. “Burgess” arrives drunk and cruelly mocks the lawyer, who introduces himself as “a fan”. The narrator’s wife, like Theroux’s then-wife, is named Anne and she shrewishly refuses to help with the dinner. The magazine later published a letter from Anne Theroux denying that Burgess was ever a guest in her home and expressing admiration for him, having once interviewed the real Burgess for the BBC: “I was dismayed to read in your August 7th edition a story … by Paul Theroux, in which a very unpleasant character with my name said and did things that I have never said or done.” When the story was incorporated into Theroux’s novel, ''My Other Life'' (1996), the wife character is renamed Alison and reference to her work at the BBC is excised. '' Saint Jack '', Theroux's 1973 novel about an affable American panderer operating in Singapore during the Vietnam War, was filmed by director Peter Bogdanovich (1979). His novel ''Doctor Slaughter'' was made into a film, '' Half Moon Street '' (1986). His novel '' The Mosquito Coast '' was also made into a film of the same name (1986). ''Chinese Box'' (1997), a film about the British handover of Hong Kong to the People's Republic Of China , credits Theroux as a source for the story, based on themes he explores in his 1997 novel ''Kowloon Tong''. Theroux currently lives in Hawaii . He is currently married to Sheila Donnelly (since November 18 1995 ). He was married to Anne Castle from 1967 to 1993. He has two sons with his first wife - writer and television presenter Marcel Theroux , and television presenter Louis Theroux . LIST OF NOVELS LIST OF NON-FICTION BOOKS
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