J. Maarten Troost
Author of The Sex Lives of Cannibals: Adrift in the Equatorial Pacific
About the Author
Series
Works by J. Maarten Troost
Getting Stoned with Savages: A Trip Through the Islands of Fiji and Vanuatu (2006) 922 copies, 42 reviews
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Birthdate
- 1969 or 1970
- Gender
- male
- Education
- George Washington University (MA|1995)
Boston University (BA|International Relations) - Occupations
- consultant (World Bank)
author
anthropologist
essayist
travel writer - Organizations
- World Bank (consultant)
- Short biography
- Jan Maarten Troost (known professionally as J. Maarten Troost) (born 1969 in The Netherlands) is a Dutch-American travel writer and essayist.
From 1992-94, Troost worked as a correspondent for The Prague Post, where he wrote about everything from the dissolution of Czechoslovakia to the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina. He has also worked as a consultant to the World Bank.
Troost was born in Groningen, The Netherlands in 1969, and is of Dutch-Czech descent. He was educated at Boston University (B.A.) and The George Washington University (M.A.). He has lived in the Netherlands, Canada, the Czech Republic, Kiribati, Vanuatu, Fiji, and the United States, where, after a long stint in California, he presently resides in the Washington D.C. area with his wife and children.[from
J. Maarten Troost in Wikipedia retrieved 11/25/17] - Nationality
- USA (resident)
Netherlands (birth) - Birthplace
- Groningen, Netherlands
- Places of residence
- Netherlands (birth)
Tarawa, Republic of Kiribati
Fiji Islands
California, USA
Prague, Czech Republic
Canada
Members
Discussions
Memoir-couple move to isolated tropical island atoll in Name that Book (May 2012)
Reviews
Troost specializes in that self-deprecating, clueless traveler mode of writing that is popular with good reason. We get the experience of watching someone else stumbling through exotic cultures with all the hopeless cowardice and ineptitude which we secretly know would be our own lot. In Troost's earlier book, he and his wife spent two years on one island, whereas in this, they move several times. Troost doesn't get into any deep philosophizing and yet he knows the absurdity of trying to "go show more native" and the pointlessness of describing Western style tourist accommodations. Having read his third book, which was written after this one and is a discussion of his recovery from alcoholism, it is a little disturbing through hindsight to realize that he seeks a bar at every destination and spends quite a bit of time rhapsodizing over kava drinking. But, Troost has wit and style, is a good observer and adopts a good natured, humorous persona. A fun read. show less
This book is like a sandwich. The first piece of dry bread is Troost smirkingly telling us that he is just too good, clever and unique to have to actually work and pay bills, like the rest of us. In the final, dry chapter he tells us just how superior he feels to the idiots who over-pay and over-respect him for his newly acquired job that he knows nothing at all about. He wants to return to the life of a house-husband on a tropical island, supported by his wife while he floats in the blue show more waters of the lagoon and procrastinates about writing a book.
Surprisingly, the filling of this sandwich is very tasty. He relates the history of Kiribati and the day-to-day life of a foreigner willingly marooned on a tiny tropical island in an amusing and somewhat spicy, biting fashion. Its very entertaining and - with the concise history - informative.
Troost, though, fails to penetrate the surface of the island life. He forever moans the 'golden age' he presumes the island must have been in before he and his ilk brought the outside world, the developed world, to the South Pacific. He presumes that the islanders are much degraded now in the poverty of their subsistence existence compared to the life they must have lived in this imagined 'golden age', often described elsewhere as 'the noble savage'. I don't like to bring race into it, but why, why, why do white men (and it is always whites) go to an island to skim the cream off the milk, earn salaries three times that of locals, insist on importing as many of the appurtenances of modern life as their luggage - or container - can hold and are then surprised when the local people would also like to have easy-to-prepare food, disposable nappies, pretty clothes and all those other items that we take for granted?
How do I know this so good? Because I live on a tiny tropical island myself. I have the pictures from my grandparents of the 'golden age' and I myself arrived before much modern development. The island has about 10% British and American folks on it. They mostly mix with each other (and local politicans and bigwigs who have travelled and understand how to behave at a cocktail party and whose children attend the American school - fees per month more than the average local income). The non-working partner generally joins some charity, mostly for the social life, the Reef Keepers, National Parks, Coastal Development et al that raise money at balls, art shows and $100 a head dinners, and seek to pressure outside agencies and local government into restricting further progress. All of them are devoted to keeping the island just as it was when they arrived or even taking it back further and bugger what the locals want. After all, how would such an uneducated, primitive people really be able to decide what is best for themselves?
Troot's only descriptions of the bustling town on Tarawa are brief and of a degraded, open-sewer, corrupt kind of existence. Does he really think the people live like that, is there no vibrance and ambition there? There are no descriptions at all of their working lives, of the education, of their ambitions, or even of courtship and marriage. He is very selective indeed about the cultural aspects of island-life he describes. Troost is as patronising as the ex-pats are on my island with their old-colonial attitudes now so out of place and out of time.
I would probably not want to read Maarten Troost's other book on Fiji, written while he was again a house-husband and before he relocated to the truly golden life of California. However, when his columns for Atlantic Monthly and the Washington Post are inevitably collected into a slim volume without the verbiage of a full-length book, I would definitely buy it. Small, appetizing bites can be even tastier than a full-scale meal. show less
Surprisingly, the filling of this sandwich is very tasty. He relates the history of Kiribati and the day-to-day life of a foreigner willingly marooned on a tiny tropical island in an amusing and somewhat spicy, biting fashion. Its very entertaining and - with the concise history - informative.
Troost, though, fails to penetrate the surface of the island life. He forever moans the 'golden age' he presumes the island must have been in before he and his ilk brought the outside world, the developed world, to the South Pacific. He presumes that the islanders are much degraded now in the poverty of their subsistence existence compared to the life they must have lived in this imagined 'golden age', often described elsewhere as 'the noble savage'. I don't like to bring race into it, but why, why, why do white men (and it is always whites) go to an island to skim the cream off the milk, earn salaries three times that of locals, insist on importing as many of the appurtenances of modern life as their luggage - or container - can hold and are then surprised when the local people would also like to have easy-to-prepare food, disposable nappies, pretty clothes and all those other items that we take for granted?
How do I know this so good? Because I live on a tiny tropical island myself. I have the pictures from my grandparents of the 'golden age' and I myself arrived before much modern development. The island has about 10% British and American folks on it. They mostly mix with each other (and local politicans and bigwigs who have travelled and understand how to behave at a cocktail party and whose children attend the American school - fees per month more than the average local income). The non-working partner generally joins some charity, mostly for the social life, the Reef Keepers, National Parks, Coastal Development et al that raise money at balls, art shows and $100 a head dinners, and seek to pressure outside agencies and local government into restricting further progress. All of them are devoted to keeping the island just as it was when they arrived or even taking it back further and bugger what the locals want. After all, how would such an uneducated, primitive people really be able to decide what is best for themselves?
Troot's only descriptions of the bustling town on Tarawa are brief and of a degraded, open-sewer, corrupt kind of existence. Does he really think the people live like that, is there no vibrance and ambition there? There are no descriptions at all of their working lives, of the education, of their ambitions, or even of courtship and marriage. He is very selective indeed about the cultural aspects of island-life he describes. Troost is as patronising as the ex-pats are on my island with their old-colonial attitudes now so out of place and out of time.
I would probably not want to read Maarten Troost's other book on Fiji, written while he was again a house-husband and before he relocated to the truly golden life of California. However, when his columns for Atlantic Monthly and the Washington Post are inevitably collected into a slim volume without the verbiage of a full-length book, I would definitely buy it. Small, appetizing bites can be even tastier than a full-scale meal. show less
jedore's profile picture
your review for:
The Sex Lives of Cannibals: Adrift in the Equatorial Pacific by J. Maarten Troost
5.0
No, it’s not porn – of either the soft or hard variety. It is the funniest book I have read in the 43 years I have been devouring them. Wickedly funny. And, it couldn’t have come at a more perfect time. For weeks I had been plodding through the 10,000+ page classic Middlemarch with brutal (and quite admirable) determination. I always rise to a daunting show more intellectual challenge…but, not in Kauai. There is an unwritten law (somewhere) that while in Paradise one is only allowed to read books that make you laugh, soar, or are of the soft or hard core variety . So, Middlemarch remains on my nightstand waiting patiently for my return to reality. I couldn’t have picked a better book...
I must warn you that this is not the best book to read in public. First, there is the title. You’ll notice occasional furtive glances, sly grins or raised eyebrows. The rebel in me calls forth a seductive smile at just the right moment. Then, there are the uncontrollable outbursts of laughter. I wonder if my fellow airline passengers went so far as to make a plan in the event that I totally lost it…
What could possibly be so hysterical? The 272 pages of observations and experiences of a funny, funny guy while living at the “edge of the world” for two years…on an atoll (it’s not even big enough to be categorized as an island) known as Tarawa in the unheard of Republic of Kiribati (pronounced “Kir-ee-bas…on account of the missionaries being stingy with the letters they used to transcribe the local language”) in the middle of the South Pacific. He and his girlfriend move to “possibly the Worst Place on Earth” in search of an exotic life experience…and, they got it. Far more than they bargained for…the list is endless: “…stifling heat, a variety of deadly bacteria, polluted seas, toxic fish – all in a country where the only music to be heard for miles around is La Macarena.”
Try not to laugh while reading this excerpt about the atoll’s mythological beginning…
“A long time ago, Tarawa was brought forth by Nareau the Creator. Nareau the Creator was a spider and he looked upon his work and saw that it was good. Perhaps because he was a spider. Nareau the Creator then flung grains of Tarawa to the wind and from these grains other islands were born and together these islands were called Tungaru. He created demigods and people and they procreated but the demigod gene seems to have died out, and so very soon there were just people. He created distant lands and sent Nareau the Wise to tend to the land of white-skinned spirits, the I-Matang world, and Nareau the Cunning to oversee the land of black-skinned spirits. Their intermingling was not advised.
I sometimes wish that Nareau had been a little more expansive in his ambitions. As the primordial source of life Tarawa is a bit modest. Which grain was it that led to the Euroasian landmass? Why couldn’t we have kept that one, I wondered. How about the Bora Bora grain? Couldn’t Nareau at least have left a grain or two that could have morphed into hills, mountains even, something to break the monotony of a low island? As I cycled up and down the atoll on a thirdhand mountain bike that would never see a mountain, or a hill, or even a rise requiring a gear change, I realized that Nareau, unlike the great majority of deities, was a humble god, prone to thrift and frugality, and while I believe this should be encouraged among deities everywhere, I did periodically yearn for a god who kept a grander residence. Not that Tarawa is without its moments of grandeur – it is, after all, a tropical island – it’s just that it’s very, very small.” [Chapter 5, pages 46-47:]
I wholeheartedly agree with Troost’s own description of this book as “not too serious, not too stupid.” Part travelogue, part human interest, part political education, all wickedly funny…I learned a lot and had a blast while increasing the size of my brain. show less
your review for:
The Sex Lives of Cannibals: Adrift in the Equatorial Pacific by J. Maarten Troost
5.0
No, it’s not porn – of either the soft or hard variety. It is the funniest book I have read in the 43 years I have been devouring them. Wickedly funny. And, it couldn’t have come at a more perfect time. For weeks I had been plodding through the 10,000+ page classic Middlemarch with brutal (and quite admirable) determination. I always rise to a daunting show more intellectual challenge…but, not in Kauai. There is an unwritten law (somewhere) that while in Paradise one is only allowed to read books that make you laugh, soar, or are of the soft or hard core variety . So, Middlemarch remains on my nightstand waiting patiently for my return to reality. I couldn’t have picked a better book...
I must warn you that this is not the best book to read in public. First, there is the title. You’ll notice occasional furtive glances, sly grins or raised eyebrows. The rebel in me calls forth a seductive smile at just the right moment. Then, there are the uncontrollable outbursts of laughter. I wonder if my fellow airline passengers went so far as to make a plan in the event that I totally lost it…
What could possibly be so hysterical? The 272 pages of observations and experiences of a funny, funny guy while living at the “edge of the world” for two years…on an atoll (it’s not even big enough to be categorized as an island) known as Tarawa in the unheard of Republic of Kiribati (pronounced “Kir-ee-bas…on account of the missionaries being stingy with the letters they used to transcribe the local language”) in the middle of the South Pacific. He and his girlfriend move to “possibly the Worst Place on Earth” in search of an exotic life experience…and, they got it. Far more than they bargained for…the list is endless: “…stifling heat, a variety of deadly bacteria, polluted seas, toxic fish – all in a country where the only music to be heard for miles around is La Macarena.”
Try not to laugh while reading this excerpt about the atoll’s mythological beginning…
“A long time ago, Tarawa was brought forth by Nareau the Creator. Nareau the Creator was a spider and he looked upon his work and saw that it was good. Perhaps because he was a spider. Nareau the Creator then flung grains of Tarawa to the wind and from these grains other islands were born and together these islands were called Tungaru. He created demigods and people and they procreated but the demigod gene seems to have died out, and so very soon there were just people. He created distant lands and sent Nareau the Wise to tend to the land of white-skinned spirits, the I-Matang world, and Nareau the Cunning to oversee the land of black-skinned spirits. Their intermingling was not advised.
I sometimes wish that Nareau had been a little more expansive in his ambitions. As the primordial source of life Tarawa is a bit modest. Which grain was it that led to the Euroasian landmass? Why couldn’t we have kept that one, I wondered. How about the Bora Bora grain? Couldn’t Nareau at least have left a grain or two that could have morphed into hills, mountains even, something to break the monotony of a low island? As I cycled up and down the atoll on a thirdhand mountain bike that would never see a mountain, or a hill, or even a rise requiring a gear change, I realized that Nareau, unlike the great majority of deities, was a humble god, prone to thrift and frugality, and while I believe this should be encouraged among deities everywhere, I did periodically yearn for a god who kept a grander residence. Not that Tarawa is without its moments of grandeur – it is, after all, a tropical island – it’s just that it’s very, very small.” [Chapter 5, pages 46-47:]
I wholeheartedly agree with Troost’s own description of this book as “not too serious, not too stupid.” Part travelogue, part human interest, part political education, all wickedly funny…I learned a lot and had a blast while increasing the size of my brain. show less
Troost—somewhat addicted to travel—jumped at the chance to move to Kiribati (pronounced kir-ee-bas) when his girlfriend got a job there. Troost is funny—and he can put a hilarious spin on just about the worst things imaginable (except he’s very serious about the tribute to the victims of one of the worst WWII battles there). Thankfully he has this outlook on life because Kiribati sounds about like the worst place on the planet to live. One of the most surprising things to know is show more that this island surrounded by beautiful blue ocean tends to be subjected to years-long droughts. Be aware the dogs are brutal, and are treated in kind unless they are eaten. So big trigger warning there. This is an excellent book, though, about what it’s really like living in so-called paradise. show less
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