WRITERS ARE UNBALANCED PEOPLE. Paul Theroux is an American novelist and travel writer known for his highly personal award-winning observations on many locales. Over 50 works of fiction and travel writing include modern classics The Great Railway Bazaar, The Old Patagonian Express, My Secret History and The Mosquito Coast. Theroux's recent book, Burma Sahib, explores Eric Blair's years as a British Raj police officer in colonial Burma that transformed him into the anticolonial writer, George Orwell.

"A novelist speculates, and that's my role in life: to invent, to imagine, and to create the person"

"The writer is defining himself or herself with each book"

"Most of my books are about a person, usually a man somewhat like myself, that needs to solve a problem"