Paul Theroux, an American novelist who has lived and written as an expatriate since 1963, was born in Medford, Massachusetts, on 10 April 1941, to Albert Eugene and Anne Dittami Theroux. Following his graduation from Medford High School in 1959, he briefly attended the University of Maine, transferring the next year to the University of Massachusetts. There, he immediately refused to join the ROTC, declaring himself to be a pacifist; later he wrote that it was actually cowardice, a trait he finds admirable, which motivated him. In 1962 he was arrested for leading an antiwar demonstration, not the last time that his politics got him into trouble.

Following his graduation from Massachusetts in 1963, and a brief period of graduate study at Syracuse, he joined the Peace Corps and was sent as a lecturer in English to Malawi in eastern Africa. He taught at Soche Hill College in Limbe, Malawi, until the fall of...