{"title":"Pico Iyer Books","description":"\u003cp\u003eBrowse the books by Pico Iyer we have in stock, second-hand, in hardback and paperback. Mostly non-fiction and travel. Every book ships from our own UK warehouse. Free UK delivery on orders of £10 or more.\u003c\/p\u003e","products":[{"product_id":"a-beginners-guide-to-japan-observations-and-provocations-vintage-departures","title":"A Beginner's Guide to Japan: Observations and Provocations (Vintage Departures)","description":"\u003cp\u003e“Arguably the greatest living travel writer” (\u003ci\u003eOutside\u003c\/i\u003e magazine), Pico Iyer has called Japan home for more than three decades. But, as he is the first to admit, the country remains an enigma even to its long-term residents. In \u003ci\u003eA Beginner’s Guide to Japan\u003c\/i\u003e, Iyer draws on his years of experience—his travels, conversations, readings, and reflections—to craft a playful and profound book of surprising, brief, incisive glimpses into Japanese culture. He recounts his adventures and observations as he travels from a meditation hall to a love hotel, from West Point to Kyoto Station, and from dinner with Meryl Streep to an ill-fated call to the Apple service center in a series of provocations guaranteed to\u003cbr\u003e pique the interest and curiosity of those who don’t know Japan—and to remind those who do of its myriad fascinations.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cdiv class=\"sb-details\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eAuthor:\u003c\/strong\u003e \u003ca href=\"\/collections\/pico-iyer-books\"\u003ePico Iyer\u003c\/a\u003e (all their books in stock)\u003cbr\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eFormat:\u003c\/strong\u003e Paperback\u003cbr\u003e\u003cstrong\u003ePublished:\u003c\/strong\u003e 2020\u003cbr\u003e\u003cstrong\u003ePages:\u003c\/strong\u003e 208\u003cbr\u003e\u003cstrong\u003ePublisher:\u003c\/strong\u003e Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group\u003cbr\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eISBN:\u003c\/strong\u003e 9781101973479\u003c\/p\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group","offers":[{"title":"Poor Condition — £754.80","offer_id":47901322313905,"sku":"SB-1101973471-C4","price":754.8,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0618\/2669\/5345\/files\/1101973471.jpg?v=1789673134"},{"product_id":"abandon-a-romance","title":"Abandon: A Romance","description":"\u003cp\u003eJohn Macmillan is an Englishman in California studying Sufism, and in particular Rumi, the thirteenth-century Islamic mystic and at present the best-selling poet in America. Traveling to Damascus, he hears rumors of a secret, heretical manuscript that might have escaped from Iran during the chaos of its Revolution, and, taking a message back to California, ends up encountering Camilla Jensen, an open if somewhat wayward Californian, who seems in some way connected to the world of fugitive texts.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eFollowing the trail of mystical poems through Spain and India to Iran, and trying to unravel the mystery that lies behind Camilla, John finds himself descending ever deeper into a world of passion and bewilderment. Then, suddenly, a manuscript appears, and Camilla disappears, leaving him closer to an understanding of some things, yet further from a real understanding of what is most important to him.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAbandon is a mystical romance in the classic Persian tradition brought into the bleached sunlight of Southern California today. But it is also an unexpected and distinctive look at the clash between Islam and the West, at a time when Los Angeles is partly run by Iranian exiles and the long-closed cities of Iran are slowly opening up to Westerners.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eEerie and incandescent, Abandon displays Iyer’s unique gift for showing the dance of dreams and desires and preconceptions that ensues when cultures collide.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cdiv class=\"sb-details\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eAuthor:\u003c\/strong\u003e \u003ca href=\"\/collections\/pico-iyer-books\"\u003ePico Iyer\u003c\/a\u003e (all their books in stock)\u003cbr\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eFormat:\u003c\/strong\u003e Hardback\u003cbr\u003e\u003cstrong\u003ePublished:\u003c\/strong\u003e 2003\u003cbr\u003e\u003cstrong\u003ePages:\u003c\/strong\u003e 368\u003cbr\u003e\u003cstrong\u003ePublisher:\u003c\/strong\u003e Knopf\u003cbr\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eISBN:\u003c\/strong\u003e 9780375415050\u003c\/p\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Knopf","offers":[{"title":"Poor Condition — £4.96","offer_id":47910892503217,"sku":"SB-037541505X-C4","price":4.96,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0618\/2669\/5345\/files\/037541505X.jpg?v=1789227291"},{"product_id":"falling-off-the-map-some-lonely-places-of-the-world","title":"Falling Off the Map: Some Lonely Places of the World","description":"\u003cp\u003eThe author of Video Night in Kathmandu describes the building of the world's biggest tourist hotel in the tourist-free North Korea, the effects of inflation in Argentina, shortages in Cuba, and crime in Paraguay. 15,000 first printing.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cdiv class=\"sb-details\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eAuthor:\u003c\/strong\u003e \u003ca href=\"\/collections\/pico-iyer-books\"\u003ePico Iyer\u003c\/a\u003e (all their books in stock)\u003cbr\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eFormat:\u003c\/strong\u003e Hardback\u003cbr\u003e\u003cstrong\u003ePublished:\u003c\/strong\u003e 1993\u003cbr\u003e\u003cstrong\u003ePages:\u003c\/strong\u003e 190\u003cbr\u003e\u003cstrong\u003ePublisher:\u003c\/strong\u003e Knopf\u003cbr\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eISBN:\u003c\/strong\u003e 9780679422648\u003c\/p\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Knopf","offers":[{"title":"Standard Secondhand — £14.49","offer_id":47912556462257,"sku":"SB-0679422641-C3","price":14.49,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0618\/2669\/5345\/files\/0679422641.jpg?v=1789269863"},{"product_id":"buddha-the-living-way","title":"Buddha: The Living Way","description":"\u003cp\u003e\"Since Buddhism is a part of daily life for most of its adherents, it is, willy-nilly, entangled in the world, as a lotus grows out of mud,\" Pico Iyer writes in the essay that accompanies deForest W. Trimingham's remarkable\u003cbr\u003ephotographs of the places where Buddhism is practiced today. Trimingham traveled to remote regions of Tibet, where tattered prayer flags hang tangled on crude poles in lonely Himalayan mountain passes, as well as to a Shambhala center in Colorado, where American Buddhists practice Zen archery. He has visited some of the most beautiful places in the world--the temple compound of Pagan in Burma, ninth-century shrines in Java, a meditation garden near Kyoto. His photographs capture the essence of Buddhist life in all its diversity, \"in part,\" Pico Iyer writes, \"because they are so inescapably human, even with their lyricism, and in part because so many of them spin like a mandala with all the whirling energies of Buddhist devotion, its reds and golds, its glowing statues, its ornately carved doorways that seem to open onto a world of candles and sutras and scroll paintings teeming with forces both wrathful and benign.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe book was conceived to be read like a Buddhist scroll. 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Why did Dire Straits blast out over Hiroshima, Bruce Springsteen over Bali and Madonna over all? If he was eager to learn where East meets West, how pop-culture and imperialism penetrated through the world's most ancient civilizations, then the truths he began to uncover were more startling, more subtle, more complex than he ever anticipated. Who was hustling whom? When did this pursuit of illusions and vested interests, with its curious mixture of innocence and calculation, turn from confrontation into mating dance?\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cdiv class=\"sb-details\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eAuthor:\u003c\/strong\u003e \u003ca href=\"\/collections\/pico-iyer-books\"\u003ePico Iyer\u003c\/a\u003e (all their books in stock)\u003cbr\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eFormat:\u003c\/strong\u003e Hardback\u003cbr\u003e\u003cstrong\u003ePublished:\u003c\/strong\u003e 1988\u003cbr\u003e\u003cstrong\u003ePages:\u003c\/strong\u003e 376\u003cbr\u003e\u003cstrong\u003ePublisher:\u003c\/strong\u003e Bloomsbury\u003cbr\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eISBN:\u003c\/strong\u003e 9780747501831\u003c\/p\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Bloomsbury","offers":[{"title":"Standard Secondhand — £2.43","offer_id":47913757638833,"sku":"SB-0747501831-C3","price":2.43,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0618\/2669\/5345\/files\/0747501831.jpg?v=1789227495"},{"product_id":"sun-after-dark","title":"Sun After Dark","description":"\u003cp\u003e\"Pico Iyer - one of our most compelling and profoundly provocative travel writers - invites us to accompany him on an array of exotic explorations, from L.A. and Yemen to Haiti and Ethiopia, from a Bolivian prison to a hidden monastery in Tibet. He goes to Cambodia, where the main tourist attraction is a collection of skulls from the Khmer Rouge killing fields, and travels through southern Arabia in the weeks before September 11, 2001. He practices meditation with Leonard Cohen and discusses geopolitics with the Dalai Lama, travels to Easter Island and through the imaginative terrains of W.G. Sebald and Kazuo Ishiguro, weaving physical and psychological challenges together into a seamless narrative. Throughout his travels, the familiar thrill of adventure is haunted by the unsettling questions that arise for Iyer everywhere he goes: How do we reconcile suffering with the sunlight often found around it? How does the foreign instruct the traveler, precisely by discomfiting him? And how does travel take us more deeply into reality, both within us and without?\"--Publisher's description.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cdiv class=\"sb-details\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eAuthor:\u003c\/strong\u003e \u003ca href=\"\/collections\/pico-iyer-books\"\u003ePico Iyer\u003c\/a\u003e (all their books in stock)\u003cbr\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eFormat:\u003c\/strong\u003e Paperback\u003cbr\u003e\u003cstrong\u003ePublished:\u003c\/strong\u003e 2005\u003cbr\u003e\u003cstrong\u003ePages:\u003c\/strong\u003e 223\u003cbr\u003e\u003cstrong\u003ePublisher:\u003c\/strong\u003e Bloomsbury\u003cbr\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eISBN:\u003c\/strong\u003e 9780747576709\u003c\/p\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Bloomsbury","offers":[{"title":"Poor Condition — £1.21","offer_id":47913774874801,"sku":"SB-074757670X-C4","price":1.21,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0618\/2669\/5345\/files\/074757670X_8b3598c4-726b-4b0a-bd5b-7f3dd4777133.jpg?v=1790304164"},{"product_id":"the-art-of-stillness-adventures-in-going-nowhere-ted","title":"The Art of Stillness: Adventures in Going Nowhere (TED)","description":"\u003cp\u003ePart of the TED series: The Art of Stillness In this age of constant movement and connectedness, when so many of us are all over the place, perhaps staying in one place - and locating everything we need for peace and happiness there - is a more exciting prospect, and a greater necessity than ever before. Through his extensive interviews with creative geniuses of our day, as well as historical records and his own life experience, acclaimed author Pico Iyer paints a picture of why so many have found such richness in stillness and how - from Marcel Proust to Blaise Pascal to Phillipe Starck - they've gathered such rare and exhilarating fruits there. He explores the counter-intuitive truth: the more ways we have to connect, the more many of us seem desperate to unplug. In both The Art of Stillnessand his captivating TEDTALK Where is Home?, Iyer reflects that this is perhaps the reason why more and more 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 connect with what could be called the wisdom of an earlier age. 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