J. Maarten Troost was born in Groningen, the Netherlands. He is of
mixed Dutch-Czech descent and began traveling as a small child, spending
many a summer in Prague during the height of the Cold War. His mother,
the author would like it to be known, was formerly a Young Pioneer and
the winner of multiple grenade-throwing competitions. Today, she is a
Republican.
At the age of five, the author moved to Toronto, Canada, which is why
even now he talks a little funny. According to him, he became an
awesome hockey player though this could not be independently verified.
He spent his winters cultivating maple trees, trapping beavers, and
building igloos. In the summers, he traveled to Holland where he ate
cheese, rode bicycles, fixed dykes, and wore wooden shoes, which would
lead to bunion problems later in life.
He moved to the United States at the age of fourteen, settling in the
Washington D.C. area. He attended high school but has no recollection
of those years. When he was released, he hopped on a Greyhound bus and
made his way to Cape Cod, where he found work selling hot dogs on the
beach in Provincetown. To parents of seventeen-year old boys, he does
not recommend allowing this.
Troost enrolled at Boston University, where he studied International
Relations, and because he is a deeply practical person, Philosophy. He
obtained valuable work experience in the food services industry,
eventually rising to the Monday lunch shift, and in the ferociously
competitive field of house-painting, where he suffered a near
career-ender when he accidently painted a client’s Dalmatian green.
In 1992, the author moved to Prague and became a correspondent for
The Prague Post. He has now become one of those insufferable Gen-Xers
who make people’s eyes glaze over whenever he speaks of Prague in the
Nineties. He traveled widely, spending time in Russia, which he
described as “cold,” and the Balkans, in particular war-torn
Bosnia-Herzegovina, an experience he referred to as “scary,”
demonstrating his flare for evocative description.
He returned to the United States in 1994 and attended graduate school
at George Washington University. Believing that the internet was just a
passing fad, he obtained a Master’s Degree in International Relations,
having concluded that what was really important was a certain expertise
in the decline and fall of the Ottoman Empire. He put his degree to work
and began an exciting career as an office temp.
One day, while the author was extremely busy rearranging paper clips
according to size, color, and function, his girlfriend called and asked
whether he’d be inclined to move to a small atoll in the equatorial
Pacific. The author spent a very long three seconds gazing upward at
the soft, clinical glare of fluorescent lights, and decided that, yes,
come to think of it, he would prefer to live on a tropical isle in the
South Seas. The two years that he spent living in the remote islands of
Kiribati became the subject matter of
The Sex Lives of Cannibals,
which Publishers Weekly called “a comic masterwork of travel writing.”
The book has been optioned by Hollywood approximately 106 times and is
now available as a high school musical. Interested parties should
contact his agent.
Upon his return to Washington D.C., the author was hired as a
consultant to the World Bank, where he specialized in infrastructure
finance. The author has no explanation for this and attributes it to a
terrible misunderstanding. He would like to extend his apologies to the
good people of Lesotho. He was just kind of making things up as he went
along.
Troost returned to the South Pacific in 2000, settling in Vanuatu and
subsequently, Fiji. After the Lesotho debacle, he decided to devote
himself fulltime to writing. He used his experiences in Melanesia to
write
Getting Stoned with Savages, which John in Arizona called “pretty good.”
The author eventually settled in California, spending a couple of
years in Sacramento before moving to Monterey. He decided to use his
quasi-expertise in the world’s smallest nations by turning his attention
to… China. After all, how hard could it be? He spent months traveling
the roads and rails of China and developed a fondness for spicy donkey
intestines and live squid. He has since made a substantial contribution
to PETA. The book that came out of his experiences was called
Lost on Planet China, which was an Amazon Best of the Month book. It too is available as a high school musical.
Shockingly, the author of
Getting Stoned with Savages eventually
developed a substance abuse problem, which required a stay in rehab.
While institutionalized, Troost led Team Wet Brain (the alcoholics) to
glorious triumph over Team Pin Cushion (the heroin addicts) in an epic
multi-day Ping-Pong tournament. Once he sobered up, Troost immersed
himself in the world of Robert Louis Stevenson. He decided to follow
Stevenson’s journey through the South Seas, a trip that took him to the
Marquesas, the Tuamotus, Tahiti, Samoa, and back to his erstwhile home,
Kiribati. You can read about his latest (mis)adventures in
Headhunters on My Doorstep.
When asked about his feelings upon completing his South Pacific
trilogy, Troost is reputed to have said: “Now I feel like a real man.”
The author currently lives with his wife and two sons in the
Washington D.C. area. He would like to relocate and invites readers’
suggestions for good places to move to.
MORE
Great q & a here:
http://jmaartentroost.com/j-maarten-troost-author-of-headhunters-on-my-doorstep/q-and-a-a-conversation-with-j-maarten-troost/
