Troost is the author of a South Pacific trilogy - The Sex Lives of Cannibals (2004), Getting Stoned with Savages (2006), and Headhunters on my Doorstep (2013) - as well as a book about contemporary China - Lost on Planet China: One Man's Attempt to Understand the World's Most Mystifying Nation (2008).
Troost's first book, The Sex Lives of Cannibals, was a finalist for the Barnes and Noble Discover Great New Writers Award for Non-Fiction.
Lost on Planet China was recognized as an Amazon Best of the Month Selection in August, 2008, while The New York Times and Booklist called Headhunters on my Doorstep one of the top travel books of 2013.
From 1992 to 1994, Troost worked as a correspondent for The Prague Post, where he wrote about everything from the dissolution of Czechoslovakia to the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina.
He has lived in the Netherlands, Canada, the Czech Republic, Kiribati, Vanuatu, Fiji, and the United States, where, after a long stint in California, he presently resides in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area with his wife and children.