Pico Iyer

A follow up to Pico Iyer's essay 'The Joy of Quiet, ' The Art of Stillness considers the adventure of staying put and reveals a counterintuitive truth: The more ways we have to connect, the more we seem desperate to unplug. Why would a man who seems able to go everywhere and do anything -- like the international heartthrob and Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Famer Leonard Cohen -- choose to spend years sitting still and going nowhere? What can Nowhere offer...

After thirty-two years in Japan, Pico Iyer can use everything from anime to Oscar Wilde to show how his adopted home is both hauntingly familiar and the strangest place on earth. He draws on readings, reflections, and conversations with Japanese friends to illuminate an unknown place for newcomers, and to give longtime residents a look at their home through fresh eyes. A Beginner's Guide to Japan is a playful and profound guidebook full of surprising,...

"From one of our most astute observers of human nature, a far-reaching exploration of Japanese history and culture and a moving meditation on impermanence, mortality, and grief. For years, Pico Iyer has split his time between California and Nara, Japan, where he and his Japanese wife Hiroko have a small home. But when his father-in-law dies suddenly, calling him back to Japan earlier than expected, Iyer begins to grapple with the question we all have...

This book is the first serious consideration of the Fourteenth Dalai Lama's work and ideas as a politician, scientist, and philosopher. Author Iyer has been engaged in conversation with the Dalai Lama (a friend of his father's) for three decades--an ongoing exploration of his message and its effectiveness. Now, Iyer captures the paradoxes of the Dalai Lama's position: though he has brought the ideas of Tibet to world attention, Tibet itself is being...

An internationally bestselling comic novel in which a man—with the help of a bunny—suddenly realizes what’s important in life

“Escapism at its best . . . Just pure fun.” —NPR.org
“Which of us has not had that wonderfully seditious idea: to play hooky for a while from life as we know it?” With these words from his foreword, Pico Iyer puts his finger on the exhilaratingly anarchic...

"Mathematics is the art of arranging patterns, literature the science of applying them."--Page [3].

"Falling into Place: A Memoir of Love, Poland, and the Making of a Travel Writer is a coming-of-age story tied to a historic moment, the defining one of the second half of the twentieth century in Eastern Europe"--

Ursula K. Le Guin's A Wizard of Earthsea (1968) is arguably the most widely admired American fantasy novel of the past fifty years. The book's elegant diction, geographical sweep, and mounting suspense are quite irresistible. Earthsea, composed of an archipelago of many islands, is a land of the imagination, like Oz, Faerie, or the dream-like realm of our unconscious. Earthsea may not be a "real" world but it is one that our souls recognize as meaningful...