The laugh-out-loud true story of a harrowing and hilarious two-year odyssey in the distant South Pacific island nation of Kiribati—possibly The Worst Place on Earth.At the age of twenty-six, Maarten Troost—who had been pushing the snooze button on the alarm clock of life by racking up useless graduate degrees and muddling through a series of temp jobs—decided to pack up his flip-flops and move to … flip-flops and move to Tarawa, a remote South Pacific island in the Republic of Kiribati. He was restless and lacked direction, and the idea of dropping everything and moving to the ends of the earth was irresistibly romantic. He should have known better.
The Sex Lives of Cannibals tells the hilarious story of what happens when Troost discovers that Tarawa is not the island paradise he dreamed of. Falling into one amusing misadventure after another, Troost struggles through relentless, 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.” He and his stalwart girlfriend Sylvia spend the next two years battling incompetent government officials, alarmingly large critters, erratic electricity, and a paucity of food options (including the Great Beer Crisis); and contending with a bizarre cast of local characters, including “Half-Dead Fred” and the self-proclaimed Poet Laureate of Tarawa (a British drunkard who’s never written a poem in his life).
With The Sex Lives of Cannibals, Maarten Troost has delivered one of the most original, rip-roaringly funny travelogues in years—one that will leave you thankful for staples of American civilization such as coffee, regular showers, and tabloid news, and that will provide the ultimate vicarious adventure.
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You will laugh yourself silly.
One of my very favorite non-fiction books – Troost and his partner move to a remote island in the middle of nowhere. Troost documents every hilarious moment of culture shock as he navigates living in a completely foreign tropical paradise. A must-read!
I was first intrigued by the title (I mean, who wouldn’t want to know what, exactly, the sex lives of cannibals entails?) and secondarily by the bright sunny-colored tropical-island-in-the-middle-of-water cover. Then I read the description on the back of the book and I was hooked. At the time that I first stumbled upon Troost’s book, I was mired in the daily grind of a job that was increasingly boring me at a company that was increasingly aggravating me. So the central premise – the life and times of a man who up and quits his job to follow his wife to a tiny tropical island in the South Pacific (where she is transferred for work) – appealed greatly to me both for its story-telling potential and for its whole life-altering-jolt-ness. Troost is a master at painting word-pictures – his descriptions of the scenery, the locals, and the ridiculousness of Western expectations about modern conveniences and daily life are rich, evocative, and hysterical. I laughed out loud and cringed in just about equal measure at his tales of adapting to local culinary, hygienic, and social customs. This was my first foray into the genre of travel books, and I assure you it was not my last. The follow-up story (Getting Stoned with Savages: A Trip Through the Islands of Fiji and Vanuatu) is equally worth the read – not only for those of us who have dreamed of running away from the uptight and hyper-stressful daily grind, but also for those who just need a brief respite from it.
This is the story of the author’s time on the island of Tarawa in Kiribati. He and his then fiance (now his wife) were tired of the day to day work of their jobs, and decided they needed a change. His fiance took a job with FSP to help improve the lives of the people of the island, and off they went. Deep in the South Pacific – truly at the end of the earth – they jumped with both feet into another world.
The island becomes not what they expected. A tiny atoll, he struggles wtih heat, polluted waters, toxic fish, and terrifying weather. There are constant power outages and water shortages. There is nothing to read. There is nothing to eat beyond fish and rice. He and his fiance spend the next two years reveling in the pros and cons of living as basic vagabons on a tiny corner surrounded by the vast Pacific Ocean.
I loved this book. This is the second book I have read from this author and it has covered two small countries that I needed for my reading challenge. This book actually comes BEFORE the one I read about Vanuatu, but I am so glad I went back and read this one about Kiribati. I do learn a significant amount about the island itself and among the history of the island is a hilarious, well written story of the author’s time there. He is a brilliant writer. Truly.
This book does not disappoint. Do NOT let the title keep you from reading this book. (it really has nothing to do with the book itself, and the cannibals he speaks of are animals!) It is a riveting story of this corner of the world, and you will be happy to read it.
I’ve rarely laughed so hard as I did when I read this book about a modern-day Gilligan stranded on a remote South Pacific island because of his wife’s job. When we dream of the South Pacific, most of us think of pristine beaches and swaying palm trees. Yeah, there’s all that in Troost’s hilarious memoir, but there’s also locals who have been known to eat their dinner guests and horrifying foot-long poisonous centipedes. An absolute classic.
I had to read this for a class in communications while I was going to university. I don’t think I’ve ever laughed so hard at a book. It was a great introduction to culture shock and coping in a foreign environment, that’s for sure.