SOURCE: Sexton, David. “Strangers and a Brother.” Spectator 278, no. 8790 (18 January 1997): 28–29.

In the following review, Sexton offers a positive assessment of The Collected Stories and comments on the difficulty of assessing Theroux's overall literary achievement.

Paul Theroux, a great placer himself, is oddly difficult to place. His travel books, for example, are not entirely factual, while much in his novels is not wholly fictional. In My Secret History, he delivered an obvious version of his own life under another name, André Parent. Then, in My Other Life, he actually named himself and others but claimed everything to be imaginary (including a dinner party with the Queen).

If Theroux is evasive about genre, he's no less sly about his own standpoint. For instance, is he an American writer or a conveniently universal expatriate? Throughout his career, he has effectively exploited the clash of cultures, rather than studied encounters between individuals...