J. Maarten TroostSpeaker and Booking Agent Information

He spent his summers in Holland, where he ate cheese, rode bicycles, repaired dykes, and wore wooden shoes, which subsequently caused him bunion problems. At the age of fourteen, he immigrated to the United States and settled in the Washington, D.C. region. He went to high school but has no recall of the years he spent there.

He got on a Greyhound bus and found his way to Cape Cod, where he found work selling hot dogs on the beach in Provincetown after being freed. He advises parents of seventeen-year-old boys against permitting this. Troost enrolled at Boston University to study International Relations and Philosophy, as he is a very practical guy.

He gained significant experience working in the foodservice business, eventually advancing to the Monday lunch shift, and in the very competitive field of home painting, where he nearly lost his job when he painted a client's Dalmatian green by mistake. The author went to Prague in 1992 to work as a correspondent for The Prague Post.

He's turned into one of those obnoxious Gen-Xers that makes people's eyes glaze over whenever he talks about Prague in the 1990s. He traveled extensively, spending time in Russia, which he characterized as "cold," and the Balkans, particularly war-torn Bosnia-Herzegovina, which he characterized as "frightening," displaying his talent for descriptive language.

In 1994, he returned to America and enrolled at George Washington University for graduate study. He got a Master's Degree in International Relations, believing that the internet was simply a passing craze and that what was truly essential was a particular competence in the decline and fall of the Ottoman Empire.

He put his degree to good use and started working as an office temp. While the author was organizing paper clips by size, color, and function one day, his girlfriend called and asked whether he'd be interested in moving to a small atoll in the tropical Pacific.

After staring skyward for three seconds at the gentle, clinical brightness of fluorescent lights, the author determined that, indeed, he would like to live on a tropical island in the South Seas.

The Sex Lives of Cannibals was inspired by his two years spent living on the isolated islands of Kiribati, which Publishers Weekly dubbed "a hilarious classic of travel writing." The novel has been optioned 106 times by Hollywood, and it is currently available as a high school musical. Those that are intrigued should contact his agency.

The author was employed as a consultant to the World Bank upon his return to Washington, D.C., where he specialized in infrastructure finance. The author has no explanation for this and blames it on a huge miscommunication. He wants to express his regrets to the people of Lesotho. He was simply making it up as he went along.

In the year 2000, Troost returned to the South Pacific, living in Vanuatu and then Fiji. He chose to dedicate himself entirely to literature after the Lesotho fiasco. He wrote Getting Stoned with Savages, which John in Arizona thought was "quite excellent," based on his experiences in Melanesia.

After settling in California, the author spent a few years in Sacramento before relocating to Monterey. He opted to place his quasi-expertise in the world's tiniest countries to good use by focusing on... China. After all, how difficult could it really be? He spent months traversing China's highways and trains, developing a taste for fiery donkey guts and live squid.

Since then, he has made a significant contribution to PETA. Lost on Planet China was the result of his adventures, and it was named an Amazon Best of the Month book. It, too, maybe performed as a high school musical. Troost quickly became enamored with all things Robert Louis Stevenson.

Perhaps he was searching for an excuse to return to the South Pacific, which he did soon after Stevenson's voyage across the South Seas, which brought him through the Marquesas, the Tuamotus, Tahiti, Samoa, and back to Kiribati, his original home.

Headhunters on My Doorstep, which was named one of the top travel books of the year by the New York Times, chronicles his most recent (mis)adventures. According to Library Journal, you should "acquire this book by all means possible." This is a fantastic concept, according to the author.

Troost is claimed to have replied, "Now I feel like a true man," when questioned about his thoughts after finishing his South Pacific trilogy. The author presently resides in Washington, D.C., with his wife and two boys.