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32-470: Saint Jack is a 1973 novel by Paul Theroux that was adapted into a 1979 film of the same name. It tells the life of Jack Flowers, a pimp in Singapore . Feeling hopeless and undervalued, Jack tries to make money by setting up his own bordello , and clashes with Chinese triad members in the process. A film adaptation directed by Peter Bogdanovich was released in 1979. Paul Theroux He

64-452: A consequence, his later novel Jungle Lovers , which concerns an attempted coup in the country, was banned in Malawi for many years. He moved to Uganda in 1965 to teach English at Makerere University , where he also wrote for the magazine Transition . While at Makerere, Theroux began his friendship with Rajat Neogy , founder of Transition Magazine , and novelist V.S. Naipaul , then

96-598: A second time to Sheila Donnelly, on November 18, 1995. His wife runs a luxury travel/hotel PR agency. They reside in Hawaii and Cape Cod , Massachusetts . Theroux has received numerous awards and honors. Nobel Laureate The Nobel Prizes ( Swedish : Nobelpriset , Norwegian : Nobelprisen ) are awarded annually by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences , the Swedish Academy ,

128-653: A teaching position at Makerere University in Kampala. There he met Anne Castle, an English graduate student teaching at an upcountry girls' secondary school in Kenya, via Voluntary Service Overseas . They married in 1967. After leaving Asia and Dorset, they moved to South London in 1971, because it was cheaper than the United States. They had two sons: Marcel and Louis , both of whom are writers and documentarians. Theroux and Castle divorced in 1993. Theroux married

160-657: A ten-part series that was broadcast in 2021. His 2017 semi-autobiographical novel Mother Land (and earlier related short story in The New Yorker , set in Puerto Rico ) refer to an older son born in Puerto Rico in 1961 with his college girlfriend and he had travelled for the birth, giving the baby up for adoption; later, Theroux's son returned into his life. When Theroux was in Uganda, his friends found him

192-805: A visiting scholar at the university. During his time in Uganda, an angry mob at a demonstration threatened to overturn the car in which his pregnant wife was riding, and Theroux decided to leave Africa. In November 1968, the couple moved with their son Marcel to Singapore , where a second son, Louis , was born. After two years of teaching at the National University of Singapore , Theroux and his family settled in England in November 1971. They lived first in Dorset , and then in south London . When his marriage ended, early in 1990, Theroux returned to

224-557: Is noted for his rich descriptions of people and places, laced with a heavy streak of irony, or even misanthropy . Nonfiction by Theroux includes Sir Vidia's Shadow , an account of his personal and professional friendship with Nobel laureate V. S. Naipaul , which ended abruptly after 30 years. Theroux has worked extensively with the celebrated photographer Steve McCurry. Their book The Imperial Way appeared in 1987, and McCurry's photographs are included in Theroux's Deep South and On

256-548: Is the father of English-American authors and documentary filmmakers Marcel and Louis Theroux , the brother of authors Alexander Theroux and Peter Theroux , and uncle of the American actor and screenwriter Justin Theroux . Paul Theroux was born in Medford, Massachusetts , the third of seven children, and son of Catholic parents; his mother, Anne (née Dittami), was Italian American , and his father, Albert Eugene Theroux,

288-628: The Karolinska Institutet , and the Norwegian Nobel Committee to individuals and organizations who make outstanding contributions in the fields of chemistry , physics , literature , peace , and physiology or medicine . They were established by the 1895 will of Alfred Nobel , which dictates that the awards should be administered by the Nobel Foundation . An additional prize in memory of Alfred Nobel

320-835: The United Kingdom ( The Kingdom by the Sea ), kayaking in the South Pacific ( The Happy Isles of Oceania ), visiting China ( Riding the Iron Rooster ), and traveling from Cairo to Cape Town across Africa ( Dark Star Safari ). In 2015, he published " Deep South " detailing four road trips through the southern states of the United States . In 2019, he published On the Plain of Snakes , his account of his extensive travels in his own car throughout Mexico. He

352-776: The University of Maine , in Orono (1959–60), and the University of Massachusetts Amherst , where he obtained a B.A. in English in 1963. According to his older brother Alexander, Paul affects a "fake British accent" despite growing up in a working-class Boston suburb. After he finished his university education, Theroux joined the Peace Corps in 1963 as a teacher in Malawi . In a later life interview, he described himself as an "angry and agitated young man" who felt he had to escape

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384-792: The Nobel Prize. Adolf Hitler forbade four Germans, Richard Kuhn (Chemistry, 1938), Adolf Butenandt (Chemistry, 1939), Gerhard Domagk (Physiology or Medicine, 1939) and Carl von Ossietzky (Peace, 1936) from accepting their Nobel Prizes. The Chinese government forbade Liu Xiaobo from accepting his Nobel Prize (Peace, 2010) and the government of the Soviet Union pressured Boris Pasternak (Literature, 1958) to decline his award. Liu Xiaobo , Carl von Ossietzky and Aung San Suu Kyi were all awarded their Nobel Prize while in prison or detention. Two Nobel laureates, Jean-Paul Sartre (Literature, 1964) and Lê Ðức Thọ (Peace, 1973), declined

416-501: The Plain of Snakes . Magazines such as Smithsonian and The National Geographic have paired Theroux and McCurry on assignments. A number of Theroux's books have been made into movies. His 1972 novel Saint Jack was filmed by Peter Bogdanovich in 1979, and starred Ben Gazzara. His novella Doctor Slaughter was filmed as Half Moon Street , in 1986, with Michael Caine and Sigourney Weaver. Peter Weir's film The Mosquito Coast (1986) had Harrison Ford, Helen Mirren and River Phoenix in

448-1010: The Prizes in Physics, Chemistry, and Economics; the Swedish Academy awards the Prize in Literature; the Karolinska Institute awards the Prize in Physiology or Medicine; and the Norwegian Nobel Committee awards the Prize in Peace. Each recipient receives a medal, a diploma and a monetary award that has varied throughout the years. In 1901, the recipients of the first Nobel Prizes were given 150,782 SEK , equivalent to 10.8 million SEK in 2023. In 2017,

480-402: The United States, where he has since settled. Theroux's sometimes caustic portrait of Nobel Laureate V. S. Naipaul in his memoir Sir Vidia's Shadow (1998) contrasts sharply with his earlier, admiring portrait of the same author in V. S. Naipaul: An Introduction to his Work (1972). They had a long friendship, but Theroux said that events during the 26 years between

512-566: The article, he compared his association with rebel ministers and own unwitting involvement, while a Peace Corps volunteer, in a plot to assassinate President Hastings Banda of Malawi (noted above) to the complexities in the case of the convicted American citizen who fought with the Taliban in Afghanistan . Theroux published his first novel , Waldo (1967), during his time in Uganda ; it

544-681: The award; Sartre declined the award as he declined all official honors, and Thọ declined the award due to the situation Vietnam was in at the time. Seven laureates have received more than one prize; of the seven, the International Committee of the Red Cross has received the Nobel Peace Prize three times, more than any other. UNHCR has been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize twice. Also the Nobel Prize in Physics

576-515: The cast. Theroux's set of short stories The London Embassy became a six-part TV series on British television in 1987. Christmas Snow , a 1986 TV movie starring Sid Caeser was adapted from Theroux's novel London Snow. Theroux wrote the Hong Kong story on which the Wayne Wang film Chinese Box (1997) was based. In 2019, Apple Films announced that The Mosquito Coast was in production as

608-508: The confines of Massachusetts and a hostile U.S. foreign policy . At the time, the Peace Corps was relatively new, having sent its first volunteers overseas in 1961. Theroux helped a political opponent of Prime Minister Hastings Banda escape to Uganda . For this, Theroux was expelled from Malawi and thrown out of the Peace Corps in 1965. He was declared persona non grata by Banda in Malawi for sympathizing with Yatuta Chisiza . As

640-658: The government's leader(s), or cast the country in an unfavorable light. All Theroux's books were banned by the apartheid government in South Africa, but in 1995 after South Africa's transition to democracy, under the presidency of Nelson Mandela, the South African Department of Education made Theroux's “The Mosquito Coast” required reading as a set book for 12th grade students sitting their final (“Matric”) exam. In 2001, prior to his 60th birthday, Theroux returned to Africa to retrace his footsteps and "[take]

672-465: The laureates were awarded a prize amount of 9 million SEK. The awards are presented in Stockholm in an annual ceremony on December 10, the anniversary of Nobel's death. In years in which the Nobel Prize is not awarded due to external events or a lack of nominations, the prize money is returned to the funds delegated to the relevant prize. The Nobel Prize was not awarded between 1940 and 1942 due to

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704-601: The outbreak of World War II . Between 1901 and 2017, the Nobel Prizes and the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences were awarded 585 times to 923 people and organizations. With some receiving the Nobel Prize more than once, this makes a total of 892 individuals (including 844 men, 48 women) and 24 organizations. Six Nobel laureates were not permitted by their governments to accept

736-670: The person or people who submitted the nomination. After fifty years, the database of nominations maintained by the Nobel Committee is made available to the public. Statutes of the Nobel Foundation, § 10, states: A prize-awarding body may, however, after due consideration in each individual case, permit access to material which formed the basis for the evaluation and decision concerning a prize, for purposes of research in intellectual history. Such permission may not, however, be granted until at least 50 years have elapsed after

768-474: The pulse of the continent." Despite undergoing various hardships during the trip, he came away with a positive impression of Africa and African people and optimistic views of its future. However, his experiences soured his attitudes towards foreign tourists and activists. He wrote about this journey in the book Dark Star Safari . Theroux has criticized celebrity activists like Bono , Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie as "mythomaniacs, people who wish to convince

800-550: The two books colored his perspective in the later book. The two authors attempted a reconciliation in 2011 after a chance meeting at the Hay Literary Festival, an episode described in postscript to the subsequent paperback edition of Sir Vidia’s Shadow , and remained close friends until the death of Naipaul in 2018. His novel Saint Jack (1973) was banned by the government of Singapore for 30 years. Both were banned because they were considered too critical of

832-620: The world of their worth." He has said that "the impression that Africa is fatally troubled and can be saved only by outside help—not to mention celebrities and charity concerts—is a destructive and misleading conceit". In a 2009 interview, he stated that he now has "the disposition of a hobbit ," and had become more optimistic than in his youth. He further commented that he "need[s] happiness to write well." In an op-ed in The New York Times on October 22, 2016, Theroux recommended that President Obama pardon John Walker Lindh . In

864-480: Was also the first person (male or female) to be awarded two Nobel Prizes, the second award being the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, given in 1911. The Committee neither informs the media nor the candidates themselves of the names of the nominees. Insofar as specific names frequently appear in the early predictions of who will receive the award in any given year, this is either pure speculation or inside information from

896-435: Was awarded to John Bardeen twice, as was the Nobel Prize in Chemistry to Frederick Sanger and Karl Barry Sharpless . Two laureates have been awarded twice but not in the same field: Marie Curie (Physics and Chemistry) and Linus Pauling (Chemistry and Peace). Among the 892 Nobel laureates, 48 have been women; the first woman to receive a Nobel Prize was Marie Curie , who received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1903. She

928-553: Was established in 1968 by the Sveriges Riksbank (Sweden's central bank ) for outstanding contributions to the field of economics . Each recipient, a Nobelist or laureate , receives a gold medal , a diploma , and a sum of money which is decided annually by the Nobel Foundation. Different organisations are responsible for awarding the individual prizes; the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences awards

960-556: Was moderately successful. He published several more novels over the next few years, including Fong and the Indians , Jungle Lovers , and The Mosquito Coast . On his return to Malawi many years later, he found that Jungle Lovers , which was set in that country, was still banned. He recounted that in his book Dark Star Safari (2002). After moving to London in 1972, Theroux set off on an epic journey by train from Great Britain to Japan and back. His account of this journey

992-494: Was of French-Canadian descent. His mother was a former grammar school teacher and painter, and his father was a shoe factory leather salesman for the American Leather Oak company. Theroux was a Boy Scout and ultimately achieved the rank of Eagle Scout . His brothers are Eugene, Alexander , Joseph and Peter . His sisters are Ann Marie and Mary. Theroux was educated at Medford High School , followed by

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1024-488: Was published as The Great Railway Bazaar , his first major success as a travel writer and now a classic in the genre. The Nigerian reviewer Noo Saro-Wiwa wrote: “Theroux’s book The Great Railway Bazaar (1975) sold 1.5 million copies and is often credited with launching the travel-writing boom of the late twentieth century." He has since written a number of travel books, including traveling by train from Boston to Argentina ( The Old Patagonian Express ), walking around

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