A mesmerizing collection of essays that vividly recalls sojourns to mostly contentious yet fabled realms, Pico Iyer's The Half Known Life upends the conventional travel genre by offering a paradoxical investigation of paradise ... Deeply reflective ... Iyer poetically depicts the otherworldly beauty of these places while trenchantly examining the paradox of utopia ... Iyer is less interested in binary thinking than in embracing contradictions ... While The Half Known [Life] is not without its romantic seductions — Iyer's indelible prose often conjures the hypnotic, teeming vista of a David Lean epic or the evocative interior of a Mira Nair picture — his descriptions are suffused with an awareness of loss ... Offers us a revelatory refresher on American literature.
A culmination of [Iyer's] shifting focus on inner journeys and an expansion of his argument that paradise is rarely found elsewhere. But unlike his slim book of stillness, this is a return to the open road: a grand, full-scale travelogue ... Like the author himself, it has multiple identities and registers — equally memoir, travelogue, cultural history and airport philosophy. It is also one of his very best ... There is a vintage, almost imperial quality to Iyer’s brand of wanderlust and a clear influence from the European Romantic tradition of finding and writing the self through far-flung grand tours. That kind of travel writing, however, can now feel dated and disconnected in its earnest, exclusively male self-absorption — not to mention tone deaf in a world of restricted access and rigid visa regimes. Fortunately, Iyer has remained both participant and critic of that privileged mode of travelogue-ing, and I’ve always found an electric charge of journalistic observation and acute political alertness in even his most romantic essays ... The book is haunted by Iyer’s lifelong obsession with pursuing paradise: searching for an external projection of refuge, beauty and peace through travel ... Early sections of the book can feel like fragmentary, rapid-fire visits to exotic destinations, punctuated with elliptical inner monologues and historical and literary asides. The writing, while always poetic, can feel unmoored and disorienting ... A narrative cartography of personal growth and expansion. It is a work of spiritual evolution built around vivid, discernible images of real places by a master of description ... I was looking forward to returning to a vintage, aspirational brand of wanderlust with a great roving chronicler of elsewhere. Instead, The Half Known Life is a masterful merging of Iyer’s past and current concerns, a book of inner journeys told through extraordinary exteriors, of hopeful optimism for a world rooted in the paradise of being home.
In Iyer’s hands, the search for paradise, the way out of the ego, doubles as an internal journey ... No stranger to the travel genre, the prolific Iyer is after something more here. His chronicle, which begins with an appreciation of the sophistication, beauty and culture of Iran, becomes a requiem for a world — and an existence — estranged from itself ... A lonely, nostalgic and haunted quality emerges as Iyer casually intersperses bits of his personal history. There is a formula to many of the chapters ... Empathy is not the only thing going on; Iyer is also looking within. And as he looks, things get dizzier and dizzier.
Mr. Iyer’s search for paradise isn’t really about idylls at tropical resorts, though he visits some beautiful places ... Mr. Iyer...shares Naipaul’s gift for the striking sentence that distills a social observation to its memorable essence ... Mr. Iyer’s spiritual interests are expansive ... Reading Mr. Iyer’s book in the depth of winter, in a troubled world, it’s heartening to think that paradise—or at least a glimpse of it—might be available from where we sit.
This book is a mix of restlessness and the couch; it sees the author reporting on and recalling journeys through some of the world’s most divided and chaotic places...mostly in search of a bit of peace and quiet ... He is a deft sketcher of haiku-like scenes ... Frustratingly, however, his curiosity rarely seems to take him beyond these surface descriptions; the characters he encounters...rarely take on convincing lives of their own. That quality lends this book a kind of fleeting mood, a sensual drift between disparate and often desperate places. The thread is the author’s elevated desire for a sort of aesthetic revelation, the godhead in the mud, but increasingly the places in which he seeks it...tend to merge.
The latest chapter in Iyer’s...profound, ongoing conversation with the world, a numinous blend of deeply attentive travel writing, history, memoir, and reflection, chronicles his piquant quest for paradise, a concept rife with paradox ... There is much wonder here.
Iyer’s narratives...brim with insights, showing how he’s not only a wide traveler but a deep reader and thinker ... yer’s strongest writing draws on Buddhism and, arguably, he’s most revealing when he travels in Asia.
With vivid imagery and sterling prose, Iyer documents his wanderings from town to temple ... Part travelogue, part theological meditation and part memoir, The Half Known Life shimmers with wisdom gleaned from exploring the nooks and crannies of the human soul and the world’s urban and rural, secular and religious, landscapes.
For some 40 years, Pico Iyer has traveled the globe, introducing readers to some of the world's most exotic locales. In The Half Known Life: In Search of Paradise, he does so again, deploying his observant eye and elegant prose in search of the answer to the plaintive, provocative question, 'What kind of paradise can ever be found in a world of unceasing conflict?' ... Everywhere Pico Iyer travels his keen vision allows him to see both ravishing beauty and profound flaws. He never truly discovers his metaphorical paradise, but his wide-ranging quest is a useful reminder that the journey often is more absorbing than any destination.
Iyer is much more than a sagacious travel writer. Because of his education and friendships, he’s uniquely qualified to reveal a culture through the lens of his personal experience and decades of self-exploration. No one, it seems, sees more than a travel writer with inner vision ... Pico Iyer’s book had sharpened my senses.
Iyer has written many beloved books on his expeditions around the world, and he has a gift for capturing the texture and cadence of a place and its people. His latest, which he sees as something of a capstone to his life’s work, is more than a travel memoir. He explores the idea of paradise held in different cultures and religions, making the text a spiritual journey rather than an itinerary ... With keen observation and beautiful language, Iyer shows us the essential truths of places, people, and ideas.
Immersive and profound ... Iyer remains a cultural critic par excellence, matching penetrating insights with some of the most transportive prose around. This further burnishes Iyer’s reputation as one of the best travel writers out there.
