Paul Theroux

Maine is a joy in summer, but even more captivating in winter.

For better or for worse, the age of the e-book is upon us. Analysts estimate Americans will buy on the order of 6 million e-readers this year—and by 2014, an estimated 32 million people will own one. What does the proliferation of Kindles, Nooks, iPads, and other e-readers portend for the publishing industry? What does the e-reader mean for writers, for storytelling, for the place of fiction in the cultural landscape? We put these and other questions to Paul Theroux, who published his first Atlantic short story, “Two in the Bush,” in 1968 and his eighth, “Siamese Nights,” this past February, as part of The Atlantic’s Fiction for Kindle project. (These questions will also be the focus of a panel discussion featuring Theroux, Richard Bausch, and other writers at the Luminato festival in Toronto, on June 19.)

“I was dying with shame under the sheet. June was my best friend.”“She put the light out and unbuttoned my shirt. This was the first sex of my life. It was heaven.”“I was a waiter in Provincetown. My life changed when I met Ken.”“My husband, Byron, was a terrible diplomat. He quarreled with his colleagues and neglected me.”

Roughing it from Paris to Istanbul.