Pico Iyer
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Pico Iyer
Pico Iyer is a British-born journalist and noted author of numerous books.
Born in England to Indian parents, Iyer emigrated to California in his childhood. Returning to England in his teenage years, he graduated from Eton College and Oxford University, and went on to pursue an extraordinary international career across the globe. He has worked north of the Arctic circle in Norway, has spent time in little known countries like Bhutan, and has much of the last twenty years in Japan.
Describing himself as "a global village on two legs," Pico Iyer considers himself a citizen of the world. "I am simply a fairly typical product of a movable sensibility," he says, "living and working in a world that is itself increasingly small and increasingly mongrel. I am a multinational soul on a multinational globe on which 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 were an overnight bag."
Pico Iyer has long worked as a freelance journalist, and has contributed to an impressive number of prestigious publications, including Time Magazine, Harper's Magazine, Conde Nast Traveler, and The New York Review of Books. In a Time article in the leadup to the 1988 Olympic Games in Seoul, Iyer's exhaustive study of South Korea helped lift the veil on the quiet transformation of what many people remembered as an impoverished third-world country into the world's eleventh largest economy. That article not only showed a very different face of Korea from the one most people thought they knew, but also helped solidify Iyer's already growing reputation as a writer and social historian.
Many Indians are proud of Iyer's achievements as an author, and have compared him to the renowned Indian writers Vikram Seth and Gita Mehta, but he prefers to see himself more as an international traveller than an Indian writer. The Utne Reader has lauded him for "elevating travel reportage to new heights," while the Los Angeles Times has called him "the rightful heir to Jan Morris, Paul Theroux, and company."
Bibliography
- The Recovery of Innocence (July 1984 / ISBN 0886950198)
- Video Night in Kathmandu: And Other Reports from the Not-so-Far East (Co-authored with Robin Desser; July 1989; paperback) / ISBN 0679722165
- Lady and the Monk: Four Seasons in Kyoto (August 1991 / ISBN 0679403086; October 1992; paperback / ISBN 0679738347)
- Living in a Dream: Great Residences of the World (Co-Authored with John Julius Norwich, Hakan Groth, Peregrine Hodson, and Raghavan N. Iyer; November 1993 / 0671868144)
- Falling off the Map: Some Lonely Places of the World (Co-authored with Anthea Lingeman; May 1994; paperback / ISBN 0679746129)
- The Sudden Disappearance of Japan; Journeys through a Hidden Land (Co-authored with J.D. Brown; May 1994; paperback / ISBN 0884963810)
- Vintage Departure 8-C Frontlist - Backlist Assortment (May 1994; paperback / ISBN 0679754512)
- Cuba and the Night (October 1996 / ISBN 0517172674)
- Tropical Classical: Essays From Several Directions (June 1998; paperback / ISBN 0679776109)
- Global Soul: Jet Lag, Shopping Malls, & the Search for Home (February 2000 / ISBN 0679454330)
- Salon.Com's Wanderlust: Real-Life Tales of Adventure and Romance (November 2000 / ISBN 0679783636)
- Imagining Canada: An Outsider's Hope for a Global Future (January 2001 / ISBN 0969438214)
- Himalayan Odyssey: A Visual Journey across the Great Range (Co-authored by David Samuel Robbins; July 2002 / ISBN 0971523487)
- The Inland Sea (Co-authored with Donald Richie; October 2002; paperback / ISBN 1880656698)
- Abandon: A Romance (April 2004 / ISBN 1400030854)
- Sun after Dark: Flights into the Foreign (April 6, 2004 / ISBN 0375415068)
External link
- scottlondon.com (http://www.scottlondon.com/insight/scripts/iyer.html): interview
- vagabonding.com (http://www.rolfpotts.com/writers/iyer.html): interview
- powells.com (http://www.powells.com/authors/iyer.html): interview
- salon.com (http://www.salon.com/travel/bag/1999/09/15/iyer/index1.html): interview
- cbc.ca (http://www.cbc.ca/roundup/media/20030318Iyer.ram): streaming realaudio interview