So far I had been travelling alone with my handbook and my Western Railway timetable: I was happiest finding my own way and did not require a liaison man. It had been my intention to stay on the train, without bothering about arriving anywhere: sight-seeing was a way of passing the time, but, as I had concluded in Istanbul, it was an activity very largely based on imaginative invention, like rehearsing your own play in stage sets from which all the actors had fled.

His novel The Mosquito Coast was made into a film of the same name (1986). While there Theroux helped a political opponent of Prime Minister Hastings Banda escape to Uganda. He has since written a number of other travel books including descriptions of traveling by train from Boston to Argentina (The Old Patagonian Express) walking around 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 (Dark Star Safari).

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. Paul Edward Theroux (born April 10 1941) is an American travel writer and novelist whose best known work of travel writing is perhaps The Great Railway Bazaar (1975).