Pico Iyer

Siddharth Pico Raghavan Iyer ( Tamil : சித்தார்த் பைக்கோ ராகவன் ஐயர் ; born 11 February 1957), known as Pico Iyer is a British -born essayist and novelist or Indian origin, best known for his travel writing . He is the author of numerous books on crossing cultures waaronder Video Night in Kathmandu , The Lady and the Monk and The Global Soul . An essayist for Time since 1986 have ook publiceert regularly in Harper’s , The New York Review of Books , The New York Times , and many other publications.

Early life

Iyer was born Siddharth Pico Raghavan Iyer in Oxford , England , the sun or Indian parents. His Father was Raghavan N. Iyer , an Oxford philosopher and political theorist ,. ^{[1] [3]} His mother is the religious scholar Nandini Mehta Nanak. ^[1] Both of his parents Grew up in India-then went to England for Tertiary education. ^[4] His unusual name is a combination of the Buddha’s name, Siddhartha, dat of the Florentine neo-Platonist Pico della Mirandola and his Father’s name. When he was seven, in 1964, his Father started working with Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions , a California -based think tank, so the family moved to California ook, as his Father started teaching at University of California, Santa Barbara (1965 -1986). ^{[4] [5] [6]} THUS for morethan a decade have moved back and forth verschillende times a year tussen schools and college in England and his parents’ home in California. He studied at Eton , Oxford University and Harvard .

Career

He taught writing and literature at Harvard voordat joining Time in 1982 as a writer on world affairs. Since dan he has traveled widely, from North Korea to Easter Island , and from Paraguay to Ethiopia , while writing eight works of nonfiction and two novels, zoals Video Night in Kathmandu , The Lady and the Monk , The Global Soul and The Man Within My Head . He is ook a frequent speaker at literary festivals and universities around the world, who delivered popular TED talks in 2013 and 2014 (ref ted.com ref) and has Twice leg a Fellow at the World Economic Forum in Davos. He Appeared in a commercial for “Incredible India” in 2007.

Personal life

Pico Iyer has leg based in Nara , Japan since 1992, ^[7] where he lives with his Japanese wife, Hiroko Takeuchi, ^{[2] [8]} the “Lady” or his second book, and re two children from an earlier marriage. The Iyer’s family home in Santa Barbara burned down due to a wildfire in 1990, a Biographical landmark therein nov port had a deep impact on his peripatetic perspective on ‘being at home’ in general. In his literary essays and TED Talks , have repeatedly zegt: “For more and more of us, home has really less to do with a piece of soil, dan you Could say, with a piece of soul.”

Asked if he feels rooted and accepted as a foreigner (Regarding his current life in Japan) Iyer replies:

“Japan is Charmain Horn Please note an ideal place Because I never will be a true citizen here, and will always be an outsider, however long I live here and however well I speak the language. And the society around is me as comfortable with dat if I am … I am not rooted in a place, I think, as much as in certainement values and affiliations and friendships dat I carry everywhere I go, my home is zowel invisible and portable. But I mention anything gladly stay in this physical location for the remainder of my life, and there is nothing in life dat I want dat it does not have. ” ^[9]

Pico Iyer has Berninahaus the XIV. Dalai Lama since he was in his late teens, als have accompanied his Father to Dharamsala , India, in the early 1970s. In discussions about his spirituality, Iyer has not Mentioned maintaining a formal meditation practice, but Practicing regular solitude, visiting a remote Benedictine hermitage near Big Sur verschillende times a year. ^[10]

Writings

Having grown up a part of – and separate from – English , American and Indian cultures have became one of the first writers to take the international airport Itself as his subject Along with the associated jet lag, displacement and cultural minglings. He writes of or in or his delight in living tussen de cracks and outside fixed categories. Most of his books port leg about Trying to see from within some society or way of life – revolutionary Cuba , Sufism , Buddhist Kyoto , as global disorientation – but from the larger perspective an outsider kan take sometimes. “I am simply a Fairly Typical product or a Movable Sensibility,” he wrote in 1993 in Harper’s , “living and working in a world that is Itself getting more narrow and getting more mongrel. I am a multinational soul on a multinational globe on welke more and more countries are as polyglot and restless as airports. Taking planes Seems as natural to me as picking up the phone or going to school, I fold up my self and carry it around as if it ulcers an overnight bag. ” ^[11]

Iyer has written numerous pieces on world affairs for Time , zoals 10 cover stories, and the “Woman of the Year” story on Corazon Aquino in 1986. ^{[12] [13]} He has written on literature for The New York Review of Books ; on globalism for Harper’s ; on travel for the Financial Times ; and on many other themes for The New York Times , National Geographic , The Times Literary Supplement , contributing up to a hundred articles a year to verschillende publications. ^[14] He has Contributed liner-notes for four Leonard Cohen albums. His books port Appeared in languages zoals Turkish, Russian, and Indonesian , and he has written Introductions to morethan 40 books, including works by Somerset Maugham , Graham Greene , Michael Ondaatje , Peter Matthiessen , and Isamu Noguchi . ^[15] He’ll be regularly writes on sports, movies, and religion – and met name on the places where mysticism and globalism converging.

He has Appeared seven times in the annual Best Spiritual Writing anthology, ^[16] and three times in the annual Best American Travel Writing anthology, ^[17] and has served as guest editor for beide. ^[18]He has ook Appeared in the Best American Essays anthology. ^[19]

Iyer’s writing goes back and forth tussen de monastery and the airport – ” Thomas Merton on a frequent Flier pass,” as the Indian writer Pradeep Sebastian has written ^[20] – and AIMS, perhaps, to bring new global energies and possibilities JSON non fiction. The Utne Reader named im in 1995 as one of 100 Visionaries worldwide who Could change your life, ^[21] while the New Yorker Observed that ‘If a guide to Far-Flung places, Pico Iyer kan Hardly be surpassed. ” ^[22]

Bibliography

Books

• The Recovery of Innocence. (London: Concord Grove Press, July 1984. ISBN 0-88695-019-8 ) – A collection of essays about American literature, DESCRIBED one zijn cover as offering “Literary glimpses of the American dream.” The lists of publications in Iyer’s later books do not mention this book, welke is not common; the Library of Congress has a copy .
• Video Night in Kathmandu: And Other Reports from the Not-So-Far East (New York: Knopf, April 1988, hardback. Vintage, July 1989; paperback / ISBN 0-679-72216-5 )
• The Lady and The Monk: Four Seasons in Kyoto (August 1991 / ISBN 0-679-40308-6 ; New York: Knopf, September 1991, hardback, Vintage, October 1992, paperback / ISBN 0-679-73834-7 )
• Falling off the Map: Some Lonely Places of the World (New York: Knopf, April 1993 hardback. Vintage, May 1994 paperback / ISBN 0-679-74612-9 )
• Cuba and the Night (New York: Knopf, April 1995 hardback. Vintage, April 1996 paperback / ISBN 0-517-17267-4 )
• Tropical Classical: Essays From Several Directions. (New York: Knopf, May 1997. ISBN 0-679-45432-2 (hardback). Penguin, 1997. ISBN 0-14-027119-8 (paperback). Vintage, June 1998. ISBN 0-679-77610-9 (paperback)) – Book reviews and essays on places, people, and other matters.
• The Global Soul : Jet Lag, Shopping Malls, and the Search for Home (New York: Knopf, February 2000 hardback. Vintage, April 2001 paperback / ISBN 0-679-45433-0 )
• Imagining Canada: An Outsider’s Hope for a Global Future (Toronto: Hart House, University of Toronto, January 2001 / ISBN 0-9694382-1-4 ) – First Hart House lecture: full transcript
• Abandon: A Romance (New York: Viking, February 2003 hardback. Vintage, April 2004 paperback / ISBN 1-4000-3085-4 )
• Sun after Dark: Flights into tje Foreign (New York: Knopf, April 2004 hardback. Vintage, April 2005 paperback / ISBN 0-375-41506-8 )
• The Open Road: The Global Journey of the FOURTEENTH Dalai Lama (New York: Knopf, March 2008 hardback / ISBN 0-307-26760-1 )
• The Man binnen My Head (New York: Knopf, January 2012 hardback / ISBN 978-0-307-26761-0 )
• The Art of stillness: Adventures in Going Nowhere (Simon & Schuster / TED, 2014 hardback / ISBN 1476784728 )

Essays and other contributions

• Iyer, Pico (12 January 2015). “Whispers from a friend” . Outlook . 55 (1): 20-22 . Retrieved 6 January 2016 .

Selected Introductions

• Graham Greene , The Complete Stories
• Peter Matthiessen , The Snow Leopard
• Somerset Maugham , The Skeptical Romancer (editor / writer or introduced)
• RK Narayan , A Tiger for Malgudi , The Man-Eater of Malgudi , and The Vendor or Sweets
• Michael Ondaatje , The English Patient
• Hermann Hesse , Siddhartha . ( Peter Owen Publishers in London brought` this out in August 2012)
• Arto Paasilinna , The Year of the Hare
• Frederic Prokosch , The Asiatics
• Donald Richie , The Inland Sea
• Nicolas Rothwell , Wings of the Kite-Hawk
• Huston Smith , Tales of Wonder
• Lawrence Weschler , A Wanderer in the Perfect City
• Natsume Sōseki , The Gate (2012)

Notes