Download or read book Video Night in Kathmandu written by Pico Iyer and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2010-12-08 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Mohawk hair-cuts in Bali, yuppies in Hong Kong and Rambo rip-offs in the movie houses of Bombay are just a few of the jarring images that Iyer brings back from the Far East.
Download or read book Sun After Dark written by Pico Iyer and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2007-12-18 with total page 172 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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; a nightmarish taxi ride across southern Yemen, where the men with guns may be customs inspectors or revolutionaries–these are just three of the stops on Pico Iyer’s latest itinerary. But the true subject of Sun After Dark is the dislocations of the mind in transit. And so Iyer takes us along to meditate with Leonard Cohen and talk geopolitics with the Dalai Lama. He navigates the Magritte-like landscape of jet lag, “a place that no human had ever been until forty or so years ago.” And on every page of this poetic and provocative book, he compels us to redraw our map of the world.
Download or read book Autumn Light written by Pico Iyer and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2019-04-16 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Returning to his longtime home in Japan after his father-in-law’s sudden death, Pico Iyer picks up the steadying patterns of his everyday rites: going to the post office and engaging in furious games of ping-pong every evening. But in a country whose calendar is marked with occasions honoring the dead, he comes to reflect on changelessness in ways that anyone can relate to: parents age, children scatter, and Iyer and his wife turn to whatever can sustain them as everything falls away. As the maple leaves begin to turn and the heat begins to soften, Iyer shows us a Japan we have seldom seen before, where the transparent and the mysterious are held in a delicate balance, and where autumn reminds us to take nothing for granted.
Download or read book The Art of Stillness written by Pico Iyer and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2014-11-04 with total page 96 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "In The Art of Stillness, Iyer draws on the lives of well-known wanderer-monks like Cohen--as well as from his own experiences as a travel writer who chooses to spend most of his time in rural Japan--to explore why advances in technology are making us more likely to retreat. Iyer reflects that this is perhaps the reason why many people--even those with no religious commitment--seem to be turning to yoga, or meditation, or tai chi. These aren't New Age fads so much as ways to rediscover the wisdom of an earlier age."--Publisher's description.
Download or read book I ll Call You in Kathmandu written by Bernadette McDonald and published by The Mountaineers Books. This book was released on 2005 with total page 253 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A biography of Elizabeth Hawley, an American woman on her own in Nepal for more than four decades, celebrated as the official chronicler of Himalayan expedition climbing.
Download or read book The Global Politics of Contemporary Travel Writing written by Debbie Lisle and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2006-11-02 with total page 332 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book brings the 'serious' world of politics to the 'superficial' world of contemporary travel writing.
Download or read book Cuba and the Night written by Pico Iyer and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2011-10-05 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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 almost every page you can smell the dust, the cheap perfume and the rum of Havana today, or better still, tonight."--Los Angeles Times.
Download or read book Love and Death in Kathmandu written by Amy Willesee and published by St. Martin's Press. This book was released on 2014-05-27 with total page 347 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On June 1, 2001, the heir to the Nepalese throne, Crown Prince Dipendra, donned military fatigues, armed himself with automatic weapons, walked in on a quiet family gathering, and, without a word, mowed his family down before turning a gun on himself. But Dipendra did not die immediately, and while lying in a coma was declared king. He was now a living god. Award-winning journalists Amy Willesee and Mark Whittaker set out to understand what could have led to such a devastating tragedy, one that fascinated and appalled the world. Exploring Kathmandu and other parts of the kingdom, they conducted exhaustive interviews with everyone from Maoist guerillas to members and friends of the royal family, gaining insight into the people involved in and the events behind the massacre. At the heart of the story is the love affair between Dipendra and the beautiful aristocrat Devyani Rana, whom he was forbidden to marry. Culminating their portrait of Nepal is a chilling reconstruction of the events of that fatal day. As conspiracy theories circulate and rebels threaten to topple the monarchy, the future of this small Himalayan kingdom promises to be as tumultuous as its past. Revealing a country where the twenty-first century mingles uneasily with the fourteenth, Love and Death in Kathmandu is both an enlightening portrait of a place that is a world apart and a riveting investigation of an incredible crime.
Download or read book Falling Off the Map written by Pico Iyer and published by Vintage Canada. This book was released on 2012-02-21 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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 hilarious.
Download or read book Abandon written by Pico Iyer and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2007-12-18 with total page 370 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the national bestselling author of The Half-Known Life comes an intoxicating novel that's 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 the poems of the Sufi mystic Rumi, unexpectedly becomes involved in two equally absorbing quests. The first is for a mysterious Rumi manuscript that may have been smuggled out of Iran; the second for the elusive Camilla Jensen, who continually offers herself to him only to repeatedly slip from his grasp. Are these quests somehow related? And can Macmillan give himself over to them without losing his career and identity? Moving deftly from California academia to the mosques of Iran, filled with insights into the minds of Islam and the modern West, Abandon is a magic carpet-ride of a book.
Download or read book Open Road The written by Iyer and published by Penguin Books India. This book was released on with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One Of The Most Acclaimed And Perceptive Observers Of Globalism And Buddhism Now Gives Us The First Serious Consideration For Buddhist And Non-Buddhist Alike Of The Fourteenth Dalai Lama S Work And Ideas As A Politician, Scientist, And Philosopher. Pico Iyer Has Been Engaged In Conversation With The Dalai Lama (A Friend Of His Father S) For The Last Three Decades An Ongoing Exploration Of His Message And Its Effectiveness. Now, In This Insightful, Impassioned Book, 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 Remade As A Chinese Province; Though He Was Born In One Of The Remotest, Least Developed Places On Earth, He Has Become A Champion Of Globalism And Technology. He Is A Religious Leader Who Warns Against Being Needlessly Distracted By Religion; A Tibetan Head Of State Who Suggests That Exile From Tibet Can Be An Opportunity; An Incarnation Of A Tibetan God Who Stresses His Everyday Humanity. Moving From Dharamsala, India The Seat Of The Tibetan Government-In-Exile To Lhasa, Tibet, To Venues In The West, Where The Dalai Lama S Pragmatism, Rigor, And Scholarship Are Sometimes Lost On An Audience Yearning For Mystical Visions, The Open Road Illuminates The Hidden Life, The Transforming Ideas, And The Daily Challenges Of A Global Icon.
Download or read book The Man Within My Head written by Pico Iyer and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2013-05-09 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We all carry other people inside our heads - actors, leaders, writers, people from history or fiction, met or unmet, who sometimes seem closer to us than the people we know.Pico Iyer investigates the mysterious closeness he has always felt with Graham Greene and follows him from his first novel, The Man Within, to such later classics as The Quiet American. The further he delves, the more he begins to wonder whether the man within his head is not Greene but his own father, or perhaps some more shadowy aspect of himself. Drawing upon experiences across the globe - from Bolivia to Berkhamsted to Bhutan - one of our most resourceful cultural explorers gives us his most personal and revelatory book.
Download or read book The Global Soul written by Pico Iyer and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2011-08-31 with total page 342 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Pico Iyer has for many years described with keen perception and exacting wit the shifting textures of faraway lands anchored on a spinning globe that mixes and matches East and West. Now he casts a philosophical eye upon this curious state of floatingness. In the transnational village that our world has become, travel and technology fuel each other and us. As Iyer points out, "everywhere is so made up of everywhere else," and our very souls have been put into circulation. Yet even global beings need a home. Using his own multicultural upbringing (Indian, American, British) as a point of departure, Iyer sets out on a quest, both physical and psychological, to find what remains constant in a world gone mobile. He begins in Los Angeles International Airport, where town life — shops, services, sociability — is available without a town, and in Hong Kong, where people actually live in self-contained hotels. He moves on to Toronto, which has been given new life and a new literature by its immigrant population, and to Atlanta, where the Olympic Village inadvertently commemorates the corporate universalism that is the Olympics' secret face. And, finally, he returns to England, where the effects of empire-as-global-village are still being sorted out, and to Japan, where in the midst of alien surfaces, Iyer unexpectedly finds a home. "As a guide to far-flung places, Pico Iyer can hardly be surpassed," The New Yorker has written. In The Global Soul, he extends the meaning of far-flung to places within and all around us.
Download or read book Arresting God in Kathmandu written by Samrat Upadhyay and published by HMH. This book was released on 2014-09-23 with total page 207 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From “a major new talent” come short stories set in modern Nepal, about arranged marriages, forbidden desires, and the universal yearning for human connection (Amitav Ghosh). Set in a city where gods are omnipresent, privacy is elusive, and family defines identity, these are stories of men and women caught between their own needs and the demands of their society and culture. Psychologically rich and astonishingly acute, with “a masterful narrative style” (Ian MacMillan), Arresting God in Kathmandu introduces a potent new voice in contemporary fiction. “Upadhyay brings to readers the flavor of Nepal and its culture in this impressive collection of nine short stories. Like Ha Jin’s Bridegroom, Upadhyay’s stories portray the lives of simple yet psychologically complex characters and reveal much about the universal human condition in us all. . . . Upadhyay’s stories leave the reader with much food for thought and will make a good choice for book discussion groups.” —Library Journal
Download or read book Cuba written by Brian Andreas and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2017-08-01 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This award-winning book by the acclaimed travel photographer showcases the vibrant beauty of Cuba in stunning images captured over twenty-one years. In more than fifty trips to Cuba over twenty-one years, Travel Photographer of the Year Award-winner Lorne Resnick has sought to capture the experience of being in Cuba: moments filled with passion, desire, and laughter. Featuring two hundred sixty-six extraordinary color and black-and-white photos, this exceptional volume provides a stunning portrait of the vitality of Cuban culture, the beauty of the island, and the enduring spirit of the Cuban people. With a foreword by celebrated author Pico Iyer and an introduction by noted art critic Gerry Badger, this volume combines poignant stories and gorgeous visuals. Cuba: This moment, Exactly So has won several awards including a gold medal in the photography category from the Independent Publishers Book Awards; a Silver medal from the IBPA Benjamin Franklin Award for Art/Photography, 1st place for Books in the International Photography awards. It was also a Foreword Reviews’ 2015 INDIEFAB Book of the Year Award winner.
Download or read book Notes from the Other China written by Troy Parfitt and published by Algora Publishing. This book was released on 2008 with total page 218 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Parfitt takes a look at Korea's fever-pitch nationalism and gives an assessment of the world'’s only Chinese democracy, has a run-in with a Nepalese rhinoceros – and one or two equally volatile Vietnamese tour guides and ponders the actions and reactions of the people he meets. In these pages he shares his encounters with language students from all walks of life, hotel-keepers, and– sometimes weirdest of all his fellow travelers, in some of the less commonly visited parts of Asia. In a style that may be compared to early Bill Bryson ("You can't help but enjoy his writing, for its cheer and buoyancy, and for the frequent demonstration of his peculiar, engaging turn of mind." Ottawa Citizen), Parfitt endures the jolts of traveling where there is no real travel industry, touring where there is no real tourist industry, and teaching map-reading skills where there is no Western-style logic and adults freely admit they can hardly find their way to work and back. He shares it all with the reader, over a beer, and all is well again with the world. Then he's off to look for more. Steering clear of politics, Parfitt focuses on the individual humans he meets. This is a glimpse of real life in the shadow of China, neither a dry-as-dust academic treatise nor a heroic tale of surviving the Cultural Revolution. Simple people greet the author with everything from spontaneous gestures of friendship to sudden slaps, from openness and warmth to rock-headed obtuseness, and the picture emerges of a fractured, diverse humanity muddling along and still getting by –together –in spite of all. Traveling with this mild-mannered Canadian, we go through much that is puzzling, frustrating, and down-right infuriating, yet we always comes through with a smile. Readers find they have enjoyed a diverse journey that covers a very broad terrain
Download or read book Tropical Classical written by Pico Iyer and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2011-10-05 with total page 467 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Tropical Classical the author of Video Nights in Katmandu and The Lady and the Monk visits a holy city in Ethiopia, where hooded worshippers practice a Christianity that has remained unchanged since the Middle Ages. He follows the bewilderingly complex route of Bombay's dabbawallahs, who each day ferry 100,000 different lunches to 100,000 different workers. Iyer chats with the Dalai Lama and assesses the books of Salman Rushdie and Cormac McCarthy. And he brings his perceptive eye and unflappable wit to bear on the postmodern vogues for literary puffery, sexual gamesmanship, and frequent-flier miles. Glittering with aphorisms, overflowing with insight, and often hilarious, Tropical Classical represents some of Iyer's finest work.
