Los Angeles has always been a place of paradisal promise and apocalyptic undercurrents. Simone de Beauvoir saw a kaleidoscopic "hall of mirrors," Aldous Huxley a "city of dreadful joy." Jack Kerouac found a "huge desert encampment," David Thomson imagined
Simon Winchester in RomaniaIsabel Allende in the AmazonPico Iyer in BaliBill Barich in ItalySallie Tisdale in JapanCarlos Fuentes in ZurichPo Bronson in the Caribbeanand thirty-four more scintillating and sizzling tales of serendipity and wanderlust.
Having captivated readers with such gems of travel writing as Video Night in Kathmandu, Pico Iyer now presents a novel whose central character is another place: the melancholy, ebullient, and dazzlingly inconsistent island that is Castro's Cuba. "On almos
Affairs, obsessions, ardors, fantasy, myth, legends, dreams, fear, pity, and violence—this magnificent collection of stories illuminates all corners of the human experience. Including four previously uncollected stories, this new complete edition reveal
Who is the Dalai Lama? Beginning with his Nobel Peace Prize lecture, this collection of addresses, interviews, and biographical essays affords readers an in-depth view of His Holiness's personal life, his wide-ranging interests, and his thoughts on issues
"Earns its place on the very short shelf of books on Japan that are of permanent value."—Times Literary Supplement. "Richie is a stupendous travel writer; the book shines with bright witticisms, deft characterizations of fisherfolk, merchants, monks and
When Pico Iyer decided to go to Kyoto and live in a monastery, he did so to learn about Zen Buddhism from the inside, to get to know Kyoto, one of the loveliest old cities in the world, and to find out something about Japanese culture today -- not the wor
Pico Iyer’s intoxicating new novel is at once a stylish intellectual mystery and a pulse-quickening love story—the love in question being at once sacred and profane.John Macmillan, a classically reticent Englishman who has moved to California to study
One of the best travel writers now at work in the English language brings back the sights and sounds from a dozen different frontiers. A cryptic encounter in the perfumed darkness of Bali; a tour of a Bolivian prison, conducted by an enterprising inmate;
The author of Video Night in Kathmandu ups the ante on himself in this sublimely evocative and acerbically funny tour through the world's loneliest and most eccentric places. From Iceland to Bhutan to Argentina, Iyer remains both uncannily observant and h