Winner of the Stanford Dolman Lifetime Contribution to Travel Writing Award 2020

The Mosquito Coast - winner of the James Tait Black Memorial Prize - is a breathtaking novel about fanaticism and a futile search for utopia from bestseller Paul Theroux.

Allie Fox is going to re-create the world. Abominating the cops, crooks, junkies and scavengers of modern America, he abandons civilisation and takes the family to live in the Honduran jungle. There his tortured, messianic genius keeps them alive, his hoarse tirades harrying them through a diseased and dirty Eden towards unimaginable darkness.

'Stunning. . . exciting, intelligent, meticulously realised, artful' Victoria Glendinning, Sunday Times

'An epic of paranoid obsession that swirls the reader headlong to deposit him on a black mudbank of horror' Christopher Wordsworth, Guardian

'Magnificently stimulating and exciting' Anthony Burgess

American travel writer Paul Theroux is known for the rich descriptions of people and places that is often streaked with his distinctive sense of irony; his novels and collected short stories, My Other Life, The Collected Stories, My Secret History, The Lower River, The Stranger at the Palazzo d'Oro, A Dead Hand, Millroy the Magician, The Elephanta Suite, Saint Jack, The Consul's File, The Family Arsenal, and his works of non-fiction, including the iconic The Great Railway Bazaar are available from Penguin.

Allie Fox is sick of America and sick of humanity. Abandoning his home, he takes his family to live in the dense jungles of Honduras. An inventor, Allie is convinced there isn't a problem his mechanical genius can't solve and soon he is assembling the elements of a new, better world.


About the Author
Paul Theroux has written many works of fiction and travel writing, including the modern classics The Great Railway Bazaar, The Old Patagonian Express, My Secret History and The Mosquito Coast. He won the Edward Stanford Award for Outstanding Contribution to Travel Writing 2020. Paul Theroux divides his time between Cape Cod and the Hawaiian islands.


Book Information
ISBN 9780241973653
Author Paul Theroux
Format Paperback
Page Count 384
Imprint Penguin Books Ltd
Publisher Penguin Books Ltd
Weight(grams) 209g
Dimensions(mm) 181mm * 111mm * 23mm