The Sex Lives Of Cannibals

In those two years, he learned to overcome the dearth of practically all food except Fish ("raw or boiled"), the extreme heat (only Mormon missionaries wore pants), and a lethargic government he describes as " Coconut Stalinism "—"though Stalin , at least, got something done." He meets the Poet Laureate , a twenty-one-year-old Englishman who hasn't written a poem since arriving on the island, and survives the "Great Beer Crisis," when the Australia n supply ship went to Kiritimati Island instead of Tarawa, thus failing to provide the island with much needed beer. He copes with frequent electrical and water shortages, and struggles to get a subscription to '' The New Yorker '' from a hapless operator, who insists that his phone number needs more digits ("Um, I don't have more numbers") and his street needs a name ("There are no street names. There's only one street here.").

At the same time, Troost also challenges American complacency toward its own History , by doing so little to remember the many troops that died in the Battle Of Tarawa during World War II , and the many foreign aid workers and consultants, who fail to consider the islanders' real needs or local culture.

SOURCE

J. Maarten Troost, ''The Sex Lives of Cannibals: Adrift in the Equatorial Pacific'', Broadway Books, 2004 (ISBN 0767915305).

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The Sex Lives Of Cannibals