Anthony Marais was born in Hollywood, California in 1966. He studied anthropology at U.C. Berkeley and archaeology at Simon Fraser University in Canada. During the 1980s he co-founded a Los Angeles pop-group "The Squids" before moving to Paris, France. Later he traveled throughout Polynesia where he continued to practice archaeology and perform as a musician, before moving to Germany where he wrote his first two books: The Xenophobe's Guide to the Californians (2000) and The Cure (2006). His writing focuses on culture and the tendency of people to follow delusions.