From Publishers Weekly
"A trip has really been successful if I come back sounding strange even to myself," writes Iyer (The Global Soul, Falling off the Map; etc.) near the beginning of his latest travel book, a superb collection of essays, book reviews and unclassifiable miscellany. Iyer is an inveterate traveler who seems to have been everywhere, seen everything and talked to everyone. In this book alone, he enjoys a surreal romance in Bali, greets the New Year among the windswept statues of Easter Island and makes an ill-advised visit to Oman (the birthplace of Osama bin Laden) just six weeks before September 11. Other journeys are more spiritual than physical. In one essay, Iyer explores the interior dreamscapes caused by jet lag; in penetrating reviews of books by W.G. Sebald and Kazuo Ishiguro, he finds metaphors of postmodern dislocation and homelessness. Iyer seems particularly fascinated by the concept of exileâ€"not surprising, perhaps, for a man born of Indian parents who now lives in suburban Japan. Two of the book's best pieces focus on high-profile exiles: the singer Leonard Cohen, who has withdrawn to a Buddhist monastery outside Los Angeles; and the Dalai Lama, who juggles the demands of his refugee subjects with the stresses of worldwide fame. Like the best travel writers, Iyer is adept at peeking underneath the surface of things, of finding the deeper meanings in every strange word, glance and sigh he encounters. This book reproduces the unsettling but rewarding experience of travel, and will remind readers of "the expanded sense of possibility that strangeness sometimes brings."
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From Booklist
Calling Iyer a travel writer is reductive, like saying George Plimpton was a sportswriter. Iyer (
The Global Soul, 2000) reports from the borderlands of global culture, whether they exist in dusty villages, bustling downtowns, or in our heads. His concept for this collection of essays is "journeys that left me shaking in some way"; at first, it seems a way to rationalize a mulligan stew of a book (he opens with a profile of Leonard Cohen and goes on to interpret German travel writer W. G. Sebald), but as the reader's journey progresses, the work does take a pleasing shape. The best parts are the most signature, deeply thoughtful explorations of Oman, Bolivia, Tibet, Japan, and Cambodia--and an especially good essay on jet lag. Many things Iyer sees are symptoms of a global population that travels like never before, although, ironically, most of us still see next to nothing of the world. Lacking Iyer's opportunities to "slip through the curtain of the ordinary," we're truly fortunate to have his dispatches from the other side.
Keir GraffCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
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