Pico Iyer - one of our most compelling and profoundly provocative travel writers - invites us to accompany him on an array of exotic explorations, from L.A. and Yemen to Haiti and Ethiopia, from a Bolivian prison to a hidden monastery in Tibet. He goes to Cambodia, where the main tourist attraction is a collection of skulls from the Khmer Rouge killing fields, and travels through southern Arabia in the weeks before September 11, 2001. He practices meditation with Leonard Cohen and discusses geopolitics with the Dalai Lama, travels to Easter Island and through the imaginative terrains of W. G. Sebald and Kazuo Ishiguro, weaving physical and psychological challenges together into a seamless narrative. Throughout his travels, the familiar thrill of adventure is haunted by the unsettling questions that arise for Iyer everywhere he goes: How do we reconcile suffering with the sunlight often found around it? How does the foreign instruct the traveler, precisely by discomfiting him? And how does travel take us more deeply into reality, both within us and without? Intensely affecting, Iyer's explorations are a road map of thinking in new ways about our changing world.
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'Pico Iyer's remarkable talent is enough justification for going anywhere in the world he fancies.' Wendy Law-Yone, WASHINGTON POST BOOK WORLD 'Brilliant ... [Iyer] reflects back at us images from a postcolonial world that is gorgeously complex and stubbornly elusive, yet firmly within his grasp.' Jeff Baker, NEW YORK TIMES 'As a guide to far-flung places, Pico Iyer can hardly be surpassed.' THE NEW YORKER
About the Author
Pico Iyer is the author of several books about cultures converging, including Video Night in Kathmandu, The Lady and the Monk, The Global Soul, and, most recently, Abandon. His articles appear often in such magazines as Harper's, Time, and the New York Review of Books. He lives in suburban Japan.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
Superbly written, this collection of stories/essays/observations is a delight to read. It is one of my favourite books of all time. Highly recommended.
3 of 5 people found the following review helpful
First of all the confession. I only read the first 163 pages of this book, I did not read the last 60. Therefore please note that my assessment is based on those first 163 pages only. I decided to read this book as a result of an article by Pico Iyer about a trip he made to Bolivia with a banker friend. It was both interesting and funny. At the end of the article, it mentioned that he had written this book, and so that day I was down at the local bookshop to buy it. The book (read first 163 pages) is essentially a collection of short stories which cover experiences of travel or possibly sensations of travel and the related feelings of displacement, as opposed to travel adventures. I was once told that no matter how well written a book is, without a good story it will fall flat on its face. The stories in this book are well written, but are equally the most monotonous, tear jerkingly boring stories I have ever read in my life with a dash of holier than thou preachiness thrown in for good measure. Okay, fairly harsh, there is a moderately interesting story about another trip to Bolivia, and a mildly interesting one about the Dalai Lama (though nothing here we didn't already know) hence the two stars rather than the one. I hate not, and very rarely fail to finish reading a book, but I began to dread having to read this. I was unsure what to take from each essay. I feel I know little more of Leonard Cohen, Tibet or Oman than when I started, and without any inclination to find out more. Apologies, a truly bad read.
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