Audiobooks by Paul Theroux

True North: On The Road in Canada - The exhilarating new book from the bestselling, critically acclaimed travel writer

"Brought to you by Penguin. Canada – ‘The true north strong and free’ in the words of its national anthem – is the subject of this exhilarating new travel book from Paul Theroux: both a journey into the past and a cross-country road trip in the present, at a pivotal point in Canada's history. A vastly diverse and geographically scattered nation of forty million people, Canada is now threatened with annexation as the 51st state by the US President, beyond the longest undefended border in the world. This threat has had the effect of unifying the nation, inspiring patriotism, and encouraging the normally laconic Canadians to be forthcoming, ideal for a traveller with a gift for listening. For Theroux, this journey is also personal: his ancestor Antoine Theroux left Gascony in 1693 to become a pioneer in Nouvelle France and to settle in the small village of Yamaska, where many Therouxs still live and thrive. He recounts the riveting story of Antoine, illuminating the deeper, and often darker, history of Canada, before hitting the road from Yamaska, to explore the length and breadth of the country. From the farthest east in Newfoundland to the west in Vancouver, Theroux travels the highways linking Quebec, Montreal, Toronto and the huge cities of the prairies – an archipelago of urban islands, surrounded by vast, often pristine landscapes. Along the way he meets farmers and fishermen, writers and activists, new immigrants and old timers – each a vital part of this True North, each hoping for it to remain strong and free. With his remarkable gift for description and narrative, and his zest for the open road, Paul Theroux remains the most compelling, searching and evocative of travel writers. © Paul Theroux 2026 (P) Penguin Audio 2026"

Paul Theroux (Author), TBD (Narrator)

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The Vanishing Point: From the bestselling novelist and travel writer comes a brilliant new collection of short stories

"Brought to you by Penguin. From the bestselling novelist, travel writer, and “master of the short story” (NPR) comes a brilliant new collection. The stories in The Vanishing Point are both exotic and domestic, their settings ranging from Hawaii to Africa and New England. Each focuses on life’s vanishing points—a moment when seemingly all lines running through one’s life converge, and one can see no farther, yet must deal with the implications. With the insight, subtlety, and empathy that has long characterized his work, Theroux has written deeply moving stories about memory, longing, and the passing of time, reclaiming his status, once again, as a master of the form. © Paul Theroux 2025 (P) Penguin Audio 2025"

Paul Theroux (Author), Joe Knezevich (Narrator)

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Burma Sahib: A fascinating, historical novel imagining George Orwell's years spent in Burma - from an award-winning writer

"Brought to you by Penguin. From renowned author Paul Theroux comes the fascinating, atmospheric tale of George Orwell's years in Burma 'There is a short period in everyone's life when his character is fixed forever . . . ' George Orwell Before George Orwell was Orwell - the pen name he took on becoming a writer - he was Eric Blair, an unlikely policeman in Burma. 19 years old, unusually tall, highly intelligent, a diffident loner fresh from Eton, Blair stood out amongst his fellow trainees in 1920s Mandalay. It was here, over five years in the narrow colonial world of the Raj - a decaying system steeped in overt racism and petty class-conflict - that Eric Blair became the George Orwell we know: an anti-imperialist, a socialist and a writer of rare commitment. The inner journey he made in these years is remarkable, but in the absence of letters or diaries from the period, this richly complex transformation can only be told in fiction, as it is here by Paul Theroux, in one of his most striking and accomplished novels. Drawing on all his powers of observation and imagination, Theroux brings Orwell's Burma years to radiant life, tracing the development of the young man's consciousness as he confronts both the social, racial and class politics of his colonial colleagues, and the reality of the Burma beyond, which he yearns to grasp. Through one writer, we come to understand another - and to see how what Orwell called 'five boring years within the sound of bugles' were in fact the years that made him. 'Always a terrific teller of tales and conjurer of exotic locales' Sunday Times 'The most gifted, most prodigal writer of his generation' Jonathan Raban ©2024 Paul Theroux (P)2024 Penguin Audio"

Paul Theroux (Author), Charlie Anson (Narrator)

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The Stranger at the Palazzo d'Oro

"Award-winning writer Paul Theroux tells four exhilarating stories of desire in which nothing is as it seems in The Stranger at the Palazzo d'Oro. A young American walks into Sicily's Palazzo d'Oro during the '60s. Penniless, but swaggering with youth and burgeoning artistic talent, he accepts a proposition to become the companion to a beautiful and beguiling aristocrat. Their affair- formal and restrained by day, torrid and passionate by night - leads him to a place where nothing, not even his lover, is what it seems. This novella and three other tales explore the underbelly of sexual desire and together make up one of Paul Theroux's most compelling works yet."

Paul Theroux (Author), Nathan Nolan (Narrator)

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The Bad Angel Brothers

"Brought to you by Penguin. A deliciously dark, atmospheric novel about family and brotherhood from one of America's most distinctive writers There's sibling rivalry and then there's the relationship of brothers Cal and Frank Belanger, which takes fraternal antipathy to a whole new level. Enemies seemingly since childhood, the small town of Littleford, where they are nicknamed 'The Bad Angle Brothers', just isn't big enough to hold them both. So Cal strikes out for the world's wild places -- a gifted geologist in search of gold and other precious minerals, leaving Frank to develop a successful career as the town's lawyer, fixer and local hero. Apart, their differences are muted by distance, but when Cal, newly rich and newly wed, returns to the town of his birth, to buy a house and raise a family, Frank gives him the opposite of a brotherly welcome. From undermining Cal's marriage, while Cal is away on business, to torpedoing his finances, nothing is off the table, setting the scene for a tale of gleefully vicious betrayals and reprisals, culminating in the ultimate plan: murder. Few authors have as keen an eye for human nature as the inimitable Paul Theroux, and this riveting tale of adventure, betrayal, and the true cost of family bonds is a remarkable new work from one of America's most distinctive writers. © Paul Theroux 2022 (P) Penguin Audio 2022"

Paul Theroux (Author), Joe Knezevich (Narrator)

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[Spanish] - El viejo expreso de la Patagonia: Un viaje en tren por las Américas

"Uno de los libros de viajes más aclamados del siglo xx, recuento de un memorable periplo por todo el continente americano En este libro pionero de 1979, Paul Theroux relata su periplo de seis meses por el continente americano en ferrocarril. La aventura comienza en un tren de cercanías de Boston y acaba cuando un viejo expreso llega a la ciudad de Esquel, en plena Patagonia argentina. Entremedias, el autor cruza México, se interna en América Central, visita Machu Picchu o se toma unos días de descanso en Buenos Aires en compañía de Jorge Luis Borges. Sin embargo, su relato nunca cae en el pintoresquismo, sino que logra evocar un fascinante fresco cultural con observaciones memorables y fina ironía. Más de cuarenta años después de su publicación, El viejo expreso de la Patagonia es también un documento de primer orden sobre la historia convulsa de un continente. La crítica ha dicho: «Uno de los libros de viaje más cautivadores que se han escrito en nuestro tiempo». Financial Times «Escritura de viajes al más alto nivel». The Sunday Telegraph"

Paul Theroux (Author), Diego Rousselon (Narrator)

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Under the Wave at Waimea

"Brought to you by Penguin. From renowned writer Paul Theroux comes a dazzling novel following a big-wave surfer in Hawaii as he confronts ageing, privilege, mortality, and whose lives we choose to remember 'It was as if in surfing he was carving his name in water, invisibly, joyously.' Joe Sharkey knows he is passed his prime. Now in his sixties, the younger surfers around the breaks on the north shore of Oahu still revere him as the once-legendary 'Shark', but his sponsors have moved on, and Joe wonders what new future awaits him on the horizon. Uninterrupted quality time with the ocean, he hopes. Life has other plans. When he accidentally hits and kills a man near Waimea while drunk-driving, he fears he will never rebound. Under the direction of his stubbornly loyal girlfriend Olive, he throws himself into uncovering his victim's story. But what they find in Max Mulgrave is entirely unexpected: a shared history - and refuge in the sea. Set on the stunning Hawaiian coast, Theroux captures the glory and nostalgia of looking back at a rich and adventurous past, whilst learning to ride out life's next unexpected wave. 'There is very little that Paul Theroux cannot fit onto a page. His writing skills are disciplined and muscular, his ear as finely tuned as a musician's, his eye sharper than any razor, and, in pinpointing the bizarre and the unexpected, he both entertains and underlines the absurdity of humans' Daily Mail © Paul Theroux 2021 (P) Penguin Audio 2021"

Paul Theroux (Author), Jim Meskimen (Narrator)

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On the Plain of Snakes

"The master of contemporary travel writing, Paul Theroux, immerses himself in the beautiful and troubled heart of modern Mexico Nogales is a border town caught between Mexico and the United States of America. A forty-foot steel fence runs through its centre, separating the prosperous US side from the impoverished Mexican side. It is a fascinating site of tension, now more than ever, as the town fills with hopeful border crossers and the deportees who have been caught and brought back. And it is here that Paul Theroux will begin his journey into the culturally rich but troubled heart of modern Mexico. Moving through the deserts just south of the Arizona border, Theroux finds a place brimming with charm, yet visibly marked by both the US border patrol looming to the north and mounting discord from within. Attending local language and culinary schools, driving through the country and meeting its people, Paul Theroux gets under the skin of Mexico. From the writer praised for his 'curiosity and affection for humanity in all its forms' (New York Times Book Review), On The Plain of Snakes is an urgent and mesmerising exploration of a region in conflict. Praise for Paul Theroux: 'As cool as Maugham... as observant, intuitive, wry, inventive and eloquent as Graham Greene' Sunday Times 'Theroux's work remains the standard by which other travel writing must be judged' Observer 'The world's most perceptive travel writer' Daily Mail 'One of the most accomplished and worldly-wise writers of his generation' The Times"

Paul Theroux (Author), Joseph Balderrama (Narrator)

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Camp Echo

"Celebrated as the “Indiana Jones of American literature,” legendary author Paul Theroux has explored the world and shared his vision of it in more than 50 books of bestselling fiction and nonfiction. In Camp Echo, his novella for Scribd Originals, Theroux delivers a compelling coming-of-age story about racism, masculinity, morality, and leadership. Inspired by his own experiences as a Boy Scout in the early 1950s, Theroux writes with precision and vivid detail, drawing from his days as a teen in the wilderness battling his own definition of what it meant to be a man. His is a tale both classic and decidedly of this moment, when prejudice and intolerance are again on the rise. Andy Parent is a well-mannered, intelligent, and conscientious teenage boy who goes to summer camp to learn what all Boy Scouts were sent to camp to learn in the 1950s: strong values and character. Upon his arrival at Camp Echo, the camp director tells Andy and his peers that this summer program is meant “to give America a new generation of men of character, with ingrained qualities that make for good citizenship.” Andy settles into his cabin with the other “P” boys: Paretsky, Pomroy, Pinto, Phelan, and Pagazzo. Between making lanyards, swimming, and learning to shoot, Andy learns just how little he knows of the world, and how hard it can be for anyone who seems “different” to fit in. As he witnesses bullying and bigotry—both from fellow campers and from the counselors tasked with teaching and protecting the boys—he is faced with the choice of whether to fall in line or remain true to himself. Nostalgic and nuanced, Camp Echo invites readers to explore the formative experiences that turn a child into an adult. It is a work that will touch anyone who remembers the challenges of adolescence and recognizes the personal and societal trauma wrought by casual prejudice and other cruelties. A morality tale punctuated by the colorful humor and put-downs of adolescent boys, it challenges us to choose when to laugh and when to squirm. As with all great fiction, it is a timeless story, one that speaks as much to the times we’re living in as it does to the time in which it is set."

Paul Theroux (Author), Jeff Moon (Narrator)

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Figures in a Landscape

"Drawing together a fascinating body of writing from over 14 years of work, Figures in a Landscape ranges from profiles of cultural icons (Oliver Sacks, Elizabeth Taylor, Robin Williams) to intimate personal remembrances; from thrilling adventures in Africa to literary writings from Theroux's rich and expansive personal reading. Collectively these pieces offer a fascinating portrait of the author himself, his extraordinary life, restless and ever-curious mind. Figures in a Landscape is an essential addition to the wide-ranging Theroux canon, bound together by an extended mediation on the craft of writing itself, and driven by Theroux's constant quest for the authentic in a person or in a place."

Paul Theroux (Author), Edoardo Ballerini (Narrator)

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Mother Land

"Everyone in Cape Cod thinks that Mother is a wonderful woman: pious, hard-working, frugal. Everyone except her husband and seven children. To them she is a selfish and petty tyrant, endlessly comparing her many living children to the one who died in childbirth, keeping a vice-like hold on her offspring even as they try to escape into adulthood. Welcome to Mother Land: a suffocating kingdom of parental narcissism."

Paul Theroux (Author), Jefferson Mays (Narrator)

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The Old Patagonian Express

"The Old Patagonian Express tells of Paul Theroux’s train journey down the length of North and South America. Beginning on Boston’s subway, he depicts a voyage from ice-bound Massachusetts to the arid plateau of Argentina’s most southerly tip. Shivering and sweating by turns as the temperature and altitude rise and plummet, he describes the people he encountered – the tedious Mr Thornberry in Limón and reading to the legendary blind writer, Jorge Luis Borges, in Buenos Aires."

Paul Theroux (Author), Norman Dietz (Narrator)

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Audiobooks by Paul Theroux

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