Theroux Publishes Another African Story

The September 14, 2009 issue of  The New Yorker has a long short story by Paul Theroux (Malawi 1963-65) entitled, “The Lower River.”  The story is set in Malawi. A ‘volunteer’ at sixty returns to Africa. In the story, the narrator  wondered “if the people of Malabo might still remember what he had done there.”

Theroux’s next novel is entitled, A Dead Hand. In it  Theroux returns to India with “a stylish and gripping novel of crime and obsession in Calcutta.”

This is a novel that is being billed as “a dark and twisted narrative of obsession and need.”…. When Jerry Delfont, a travel writer with writer’s block, receives a letter from a captivating and seductive American philanthropist with news of a scandal involving an Indian friend of her son’s, he is sufficiently intrigued to pursue the story. Who is the boy found on the floor of a cheap hotel room, how and why did he die – what is it that pulls Delfont into this story, and will he ever find the truth about what happened?

The book is due out in November.