Video Night in Kathmandu


Book Description

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.




I'll Call You in Kathmandu


Book Description

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.




Love and Death in Kathmandu


Book Description

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.




The Art of Stillness


Book Description

"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.




Autumn Light


Book Description

In this “exquisite personal blend of philosophy and engagement, inner quiet and worldly life" (Los Angeles Times), an acclaimed author returns to his longtime home in Japan after his father-in-law’s sudden death and picks up the steadying patterns of his everyday rites, reminding us to take nothing for granted. In a country whose calendar is marked with occasions honoring the dead, Pico Iyer 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.




The Man Within My Head


Book Description

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.




Arresting God in Kathmandu


Book Description

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




Cuba and the Night


Book Description

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.




Sun After Dark


Book Description

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.




Falling Off the Map


Book Description

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.