Roam Chronicles
Author: J. Maarten Troost
Year: 2004
Pages: 272
The Sex Lives of Cannibals: Amazon
People often dream of getting marooned on some Pacific atoll, forced into a life of beachcombing despite many desperate and innovative attempts to dislodge themselves from their fate get back to society (wink). Surfers are especially prone to engage in this fantasy, often despite knowledge of the realities of island life from previous adventures.
But for anyone sitting in their office, dreaming of the day they sell everything and escape the rat race, The Sex Lives of Cannibals by J. Marteen Troost is required reading.
It is required reading because if you only take my advice and read South Sea Vagabonds (my all-time favorite travel book), you might be fooled into thinking an island paradise is, well, paradise.
What Troost provides is a real world account of modern living on an atoll – including all of the unfortunate realities that have come with the modernization of life in a subsistence economy. This, of course, now means subsisting on imported canned meat and donated funds in exchange for nuclear waste and shit-filled lagoons.
The amazing thing is that at the end of a two-year stint in Kiribati, about as remote as you can get, Troost and his girlfriend don’t leave jaded and regretful. They truly accept the locals and the local way of life, for better and for worse. And live to tell the tale (with great humor I might add).
You will polish off this book in a few days, laughing the whole way through and reading lines aloud to whoever is around to listen – both due to the outrageous stories and the hilarious writing.
Whether The Sex Lives of Cannibals makes you want to take off on the next Air Kiribati flight or ensures you’ll never step foot in the ocean again, Troost has more than done his job bringing us on a trip to a place most people will likely never step foot on.
The Sex Lives of Cannibals: Amazon
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