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Interview

Travel writer J. Maarten Troost describes his struggles with alcoholism and why he finds the islands of the South Pacific so endlessly inviting.

What is it about the South Pacific that draws you back?
Have you ever wanted to escape, to fall off the map and disappear for a good long while?

Me too. No place in the world elicits that kind of draw than an island in the South Seas. It's where I go when I'm looking for a little dissonance in my life, a place to turn down the white noise of continental life and replace it with something more elemental.

Like sharks. And long sea journeys.

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And sublime beauty. And all the other things that get your senses humming.

Also, having written two books about the region, I liked the idea of completing a South Pacific trilogy. It makes me feel like, I don't know, a real man now.

You followed in the footsteps of Robert Louis Stevenson.