Paul Theroux Books In Order

Publication Order of Spencer Monroe Savage Books

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

Publication Order of Short Stories/Novellas

Publication Order of Collections

Publication Order of Non-Fiction Books

Publication Order of Anthologies

Paul Theroux is a published American novelist.

In addition to being a novelist, he is a travel writer. One of his best known books is the 1975 release The Great Railway Bazaar. This was a travelogue made about a trip that the author took from Great Britain through Europe, the Middle East, Asia, to Japan, and then across Russia while going back to his point of origin.

He is known more for being a travelogue writer, but has also released various works of fiction. Some of his works were then adapted into feature films. He was also given the 1981 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for writing The Mosquito Coast, his novel.

The author was born in the United States. Once he graduated from university in 1963, he went traveling to Italy and then Africa, working as a Peace Corps teacher in Malawi and then a lecturer in Uganda. He joined the University of Singapore in 1968 and then spent three years teaching in the Department of English. During this time, he was writing and publishing his short stories, writing novels, and doing journalism.

He got married and in the early seventies moved to Dorset with his wife and two children. There he wrote Saint Jack before moving on to London and living in Britain for seventeen years. During this time he wrote a dozen volumes of fiction as well as a few travel books. Writing selections were taken from these to be compiled to make up his book Traveling the World. He returned to the United States eventually and kept on traveling around the globe.

Paul has written many books during the course of his career and has won awards for his work. He received the 1978 Whitbread Literary Award for his book Picture Palace, the 1981 Yorkshire Post Novel of the Year for The Mosquito Coast (as well as the James Tait Black Memorial Prize as mentioned above), the 1988 Thomas Cook Travel Book Award for Riding the Iron Rooster, and his book The Pillars of Hercules was shortlisted for the 1996 Thomas Cook Travel Book Award.

Paul has also received a Royal Medal from the Royal Geographical Society in 2015 for his encouragement of geographical discovery through travel writing. The award was approved by the Queen and is the highest award a traveler can attain. He was given the American Academy and Institute of Arts & Letters Award for literature, and his books Saint Jack, The Mosquito Coast, Doctor Slaughter and Half Moon Street were all made into movies, while his short story collection London Embassy was made into a British mini-series in 1987.

Theroux has three honorary doctorates from American universities and is an in demand speaker nationally. In 2016, his papers were acquired by the Huntington Library in Pasadena for its collection, spanning a period from 1965 to 2015. The Theroux Archive there has notebooks, unpublished texts, autograph drafts, and corrected typescript drafts for almost all of Theroux’s fifty-one books as well as correspondence from novelist V.S. Naipaul, Graham Greene, S.J. Perelman, Margaret Drabble, Nadine Gordimer, Stephen Spender, Iris Murdoch, Gore Vidal, Jan Morris, Laurens van der Post, Bruce Chatwin, and William Styron.

He is the father of his sons Marcel and Louis. Paul also has two brothers, Alexander and Peter. His nephew is named Justin. Today he resides in Hawaii and in Massachusetts on Cape Cod.

The Consul’s File is the first book in the Spencer Monroe Savage series by Paul Theroux. If you’re looking for a classic story to read, check out this book from the seventies that remains a relevant read to this day!

Spencer Savage is a young American consul. He is posted to Ayer Hitam, a small town in Malaysia, in the 1970s. He is told to close down a remote outpost in the jungle but instead finds himself pulled to the many different people that he meets among the Japanese, Indians, Malays, Chinese, and the ex-pat Brits.

Through the eyes of this character, the reader is able to witness the reality of multi-ethnic life in post-colonial Malaysia. This includes everything from adultery to murder to ghost stories to politics. It is a picture of a time that has gone by, a landscape that has been lost and a picture of scattered people all in one place that you won’t want to miss.

The London Embassy is the second book in the Spencer Monroe Savage series by Paul Theroux. This is an engaging series of stories the show the experiences of a young political officer while he is on his first assignment to the American embassy of London. Check it out for yourself to see why this second book in the series is still a classic!