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The Half Known Life: In Search of Paradise
NATIONAL BESTSELLER
NAMED A BEST BOOK OF 2023 BY THE NEW YORK TIMES, THE NEW YORKER, NPR, TIME MAGAZINE & MORE
“Masterful . . . A book of inner journeys told through extraordinary exteriors . . . One of his very best.” —Washington Post
“Dazzling.” —Time Magazine, Best Books of 2023
From “one of the most soulful and perceptive writers of our time” (Brain Pickings): a journey through competing ideas of paradise to see how we can live more peacefully in an ever more divided and distracted world.
that elusive place where the anxieties, struggles, and burdens of life fall away. Most of us dream of it, but each of us has very different ideas about where it is to be found. For some it can be enjoyed only after death; for others, it’s in our midst—or just across the ocean—if only we can find eyes to see it.
Traveling from Iran to North Korea, from the Dalai Lama’s Himalayas to the ghostly temples of Japan, Pico Iyer brings together a lifetime of explorations to upend our ideas of utopia and ask how we might find peace in the midst of difficulty and suffering. Does religion lead us back to Eden or only into constant contention? Why do so many seeming paradises turn into warzones? And does paradise exist only in the afterworld – or can it be found in the here and now?
For almost fifty years Iyer has been roaming the world, mixing a global soul’s delight in observing cultures with a pilgrim’s readiness to be transformed. In this culminating work, he brings together the outer world and the inner to offer us a surprising, original, often beautiful exploration of how we might come upon paradise in the midst of our very real lives.
NAMED A BEST BOOK OF 2023 BY THE NEW YORK TIMES, THE NEW YORKER, NPR, TIME MAGAZINE & MORE
“Masterful . . . A book of inner journeys told through extraordinary exteriors . . . One of his very best.” —Washington Post
“Dazzling.” —Time Magazine, Best Books of 2023
From “one of the most soulful and perceptive writers of our time” (Brain Pickings): a journey through competing ideas of paradise to see how we can live more peacefully in an ever more divided and distracted world.
that elusive place where the anxieties, struggles, and burdens of life fall away. Most of us dream of it, but each of us has very different ideas about where it is to be found. For some it can be enjoyed only after death; for others, it’s in our midst—or just across the ocean—if only we can find eyes to see it.
Traveling from Iran to North Korea, from the Dalai Lama’s Himalayas to the ghostly temples of Japan, Pico Iyer brings together a lifetime of explorations to upend our ideas of utopia and ask how we might find peace in the midst of difficulty and suffering. Does religion lead us back to Eden or only into constant contention? Why do so many seeming paradises turn into warzones? And does paradise exist only in the afterworld – or can it be found in the here and now?
For almost fifty years Iyer has been roaming the world, mixing a global soul’s delight in observing cultures with a pilgrim’s readiness to be transformed. In this culminating work, he brings together the outer world and the inner to offer us a surprising, original, often beautiful exploration of how we might come upon paradise in the midst of our very real lives.
237 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 10, 2023
609 people are currently reading
8479 people want to read
About the author
Pico Iyer
125 books1,107 followersPico Iyer is a British-born essayist and novelist of Indian descent. As an acclaimed travel writer, he began his career documenting a neglected aspect of travel -- the sometimes surreal disconnect between local tradition and imported global pop culture. Since then, he has written ten books, exploring also the cultural consequences of isolation, whether writing about the exiled spiritual leaders of Tibet or the embargoed society of Cuba.
Iyer’s latest focus is on yet another overlooked aspect of travel: how can it help us regain our sense of stillness and focus in a world where our devices and digital networks increasing distract us? As he says: "Almost everybody I know has this sense of overdosing on information and getting dizzy living at post-human speeds. Nearly everybody I know does something to try to remove herself to clear her head and to have enough time and space to think. ... All of us instinctively feel that something inside us is crying out for more spaciousness and stillness to offset the exhilarations of this movement and the fun and diversion of the modern world."
Iyer’s latest focus is on yet another overlooked aspect of travel: how can it help us regain our sense of stillness and focus in a world where our devices and digital networks increasing distract us? As he says: "Almost everybody I know has this sense of overdosing on information and getting dizzy living at post-human speeds. Nearly everybody I know does something to try to remove herself to clear her head and to have enough time and space to think. ... All of us instinctively feel that something inside us is crying out for more spaciousness and stillness to offset the exhilarations of this movement and the fun and diversion of the modern world."
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 337 reviews
February 14, 2023
I wanted to like this more, but in many of the essays it just didn’t feel like there was a “there” there. The author sort of just wanders various meaningful locations and writes deep things about the vibes. The stronger chapters come when he draws on more specific experiences.
August 29, 2023
I looked forward to the release of Pico Iyer's new book for several months. Iyer is one of my favorite authors and the topic of paradise sounded wonderful. I listened to the audiobook and felt strongly that the book would have been much more enjoyable in print. I have heard several interviews with the author and enjoyed them, but as a narrator his reading was flat. The book is interesting and well written. The focus is the paradox of paradise, spiritual places with deep conflict and in some places beauty bumping up against the material world of commerce and tourism. Not what I hoped for. Mixed feelings 3.5*
May 28, 2025
I ran to my bookshelf to find my copy of
The Rumi Collection: An Anthology of Translations of Mevlana Jalaluddin Rumi
when I listened to Pico Iyer read this: "'Find a heaven within,' Rumi has written." Known for seeing travel as a retreat of the mind, a way to connect with the soul, Iyer travels to many places in this memoir. He recovers from throat cancer as he visits and writes about "The Walled Garden." And after researching and writing about Iran for years, he travels there to gain a fresh perspective. He visits Iran's poets and writes: "Poetry is the form which shimmers between fact and fiction."
After years of travel, I'd began to wonder what kind of paradise can ever be found in a world of unceasing conflict, and whether the very search for it might not simply aggravate our differences.
The observant traveler is a gem. The traveler who does not seek to be the focus of a camera, but one who observes to understand the world and to be fulfilled spiritually. You sense that traveler in Iyer. One small example is that Iyer, who lived in Japan at some point, notes that his neighbors said little and expressed even less in Japan; conversely, he notes that in Iran, people articulate their thoughts, yet he still cannot pinpoint their stance on a topic. Such a writerly observation.
The notion that humans can be stronger than nature or fate, renders the half known life a devastation.
Iyer writes like both historian and travel writer. When he writes about Kashmir, for instance, it is as if 17th century history meets religious studies. I read The Art of Stillness: Adventures in Going Nowhere years ago and thought I'd return to his writing. I wouldn't say this book is as distilled as The Art. I do wish so many details were not packed into this memoir, producing a dizzying effect as one tries to adjust to a specific time or place, as one tries to find stillness.
When he visits Jerusalem, Iyer finds so much at stake. "Almost everything constitutes a trespass in the Holy City." For example, he is told he cannot take notes on the Sabbath by the Western Wall. A woman scolds him at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre for standing with his hands joined behind his back. Still, drawn to The Church of the Holy Sepulchre, he goes every evening, and then again every morning before sunrise, walking by the slabs where Jesus' body had been laid. Sitting there, still with his thoughts, away from the outside chatter and clashes, he feels liberated. Jerusalem, he notes, is the "center of a thousand clashing pasts." He sees people with signs protesting Zionism. He visits the Chamber of the Holocaust. He also learns that there are 19 factions within the Orthodox community, all with opposing ideals. "Jerusalem, more than anywhere I'd seen," he writes, "was a city of words."
When he travels to India, he dispels his own illusion that Ladakh is a "magically preserved province of Himalayan Buddhism," as he learns that half its citizens are Muslim and that the region had been a trading post for centuries, living off foreign influences. In those Himalayan spaces, he finds a "freshness" that makes him think of Thoreau: "A man is rich in proportion to the number of things which he can afford to let alone. Might not simplicity confer on us a freedom that complexity can never bring?"
Even with the cacophony of events that seems difficult to keep up with, I must say I learned a bit about the world from this memoir. There were regions, like Ladakh, I'd never heard about. I wanted to visit the spiritual beauty of Tibet once but decided not to due to the challenge of travel to such a remote area. However, I'd never thought about how that same remoteness affected Tibet's economy and people, how it affected them during communism and cultural repression because they were so alienated from the rest of the world. When Iyer ponders the idea of a focus on relieving pain, rather than cultivating happiness (something I've thought about a lot lately), it moves me to be still with my thoughts, just as the author seeks. Pico Iyer recalls almost half a century of conversations with the Dalai Lama and never hearing him speak of a Nirvana. Today we see so much suffering and strife, we see people try to escape it by chasing the elusive happiness, but maybe it really is as Rumi says: find a heaven within.
After years of travel, I'd began to wonder what kind of paradise can ever be found in a world of unceasing conflict, and whether the very search for it might not simply aggravate our differences.
The observant traveler is a gem. The traveler who does not seek to be the focus of a camera, but one who observes to understand the world and to be fulfilled spiritually. You sense that traveler in Iyer. One small example is that Iyer, who lived in Japan at some point, notes that his neighbors said little and expressed even less in Japan; conversely, he notes that in Iran, people articulate their thoughts, yet he still cannot pinpoint their stance on a topic. Such a writerly observation.
The notion that humans can be stronger than nature or fate, renders the half known life a devastation.
Iyer writes like both historian and travel writer. When he writes about Kashmir, for instance, it is as if 17th century history meets religious studies. I read The Art of Stillness: Adventures in Going Nowhere years ago and thought I'd return to his writing. I wouldn't say this book is as distilled as The Art. I do wish so many details were not packed into this memoir, producing a dizzying effect as one tries to adjust to a specific time or place, as one tries to find stillness.
When he visits Jerusalem, Iyer finds so much at stake. "Almost everything constitutes a trespass in the Holy City." For example, he is told he cannot take notes on the Sabbath by the Western Wall. A woman scolds him at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre for standing with his hands joined behind his back. Still, drawn to The Church of the Holy Sepulchre, he goes every evening, and then again every morning before sunrise, walking by the slabs where Jesus' body had been laid. Sitting there, still with his thoughts, away from the outside chatter and clashes, he feels liberated. Jerusalem, he notes, is the "center of a thousand clashing pasts." He sees people with signs protesting Zionism. He visits the Chamber of the Holocaust. He also learns that there are 19 factions within the Orthodox community, all with opposing ideals. "Jerusalem, more than anywhere I'd seen," he writes, "was a city of words."
When he travels to India, he dispels his own illusion that Ladakh is a "magically preserved province of Himalayan Buddhism," as he learns that half its citizens are Muslim and that the region had been a trading post for centuries, living off foreign influences. In those Himalayan spaces, he finds a "freshness" that makes him think of Thoreau: "A man is rich in proportion to the number of things which he can afford to let alone. Might not simplicity confer on us a freedom that complexity can never bring?"
Even with the cacophony of events that seems difficult to keep up with, I must say I learned a bit about the world from this memoir. There were regions, like Ladakh, I'd never heard about. I wanted to visit the spiritual beauty of Tibet once but decided not to due to the challenge of travel to such a remote area. However, I'd never thought about how that same remoteness affected Tibet's economy and people, how it affected them during communism and cultural repression because they were so alienated from the rest of the world. When Iyer ponders the idea of a focus on relieving pain, rather than cultivating happiness (something I've thought about a lot lately), it moves me to be still with my thoughts, just as the author seeks. Pico Iyer recalls almost half a century of conversations with the Dalai Lama and never hearing him speak of a Nirvana. Today we see so much suffering and strife, we see people try to escape it by chasing the elusive happiness, but maybe it really is as Rumi says: find a heaven within.
February 21, 2023
The author traveled around the world for about 50 years and watched people struggle to find peace amid difficulty and suffering. The book is part memoir, travel guide, and essay, looking at where we are now and where we might be going. It includes articles about beauty in different countries like Iran, North Korea, Northern Ireland, Kashmir, and Sri Lanka. The author tries to discover what paradise means to others and himself and wonders if anyone can ever find it.
The Dalai Lama is central to this book because the author was lucky to spend forty-eight years talking and traveling with him. There's a quote that is at the beginning that I loved. The author wrote, "After years of travel, I'd begun to wonder what kind of paradise can ever be found in a world of increasing, unceasing conflict and whether the very search for it might not simply aggravate our differences." I also really appreciated the passages about the Dalai Lama. This book talks about different human experiences and ends with a lovely quote: "I would just let life come to me in all its happy confusion and find the holiness in that. I sat where I was, along the river, and watched the carnival play out."
To listen to my interview with the author, go to my podcast at:
https://www.momsdonthavetimetoreadboo...
The Dalai Lama is central to this book because the author was lucky to spend forty-eight years talking and traveling with him. There's a quote that is at the beginning that I loved. The author wrote, "After years of travel, I'd begun to wonder what kind of paradise can ever be found in a world of increasing, unceasing conflict and whether the very search for it might not simply aggravate our differences." I also really appreciated the passages about the Dalai Lama. This book talks about different human experiences and ends with a lovely quote: "I would just let life come to me in all its happy confusion and find the holiness in that. I sat where I was, along the river, and watched the carnival play out."
To listen to my interview with the author, go to my podcast at:
https://www.momsdonthavetimetoreadboo...
January 25, 2024
We all struggle with certain aspects of life that humanity has thus far failed to grasp. What happens after we die? Why do bad things happen? Why does it feel like I am never good enough? These are questions that oftentimes provide a great source of anxiety for many of us. Iyer's book takes a look at humanity's struggle with the half known life through his travels to several cultures that have a particular connection to the concept of Paradise. In a life filled with unanswerable questions, how can we find peace within ourselves? This is the primary discussion of the book. Iyer strikes me as a very considerate and thoughtful individual, and it is a pleasure to read about the cultures he studies during his travels. I gave it a three star rating because, while it is certainly well written and interesting, many aspects of the book will disappear from my memory quickly. Iyer discusses several different places and peoples, but the common thread and repetitiveness causes them to blend together. It is certainly a good book, but I don't think I can quite give it four stars. So, a strong three then.
February 10, 2023
A very introspective and contemplative book ( as are all his books) on travel and the quest for paradise. Short and sweet. It’s dedicated to his 90 yo mother who died in 2021. That obituary written by him should appear in the book.
https://www.independent.com/2021/07/2...
Iyer visits Iran, Northern Ireland, Jerusalem, India, Kashmir, Sri Lanka, Japan, and Australia. Paradises are anything but so it seems. Too bad he left out Tahiti or Bora Bora- no civil wars there.
https://www.independent.com/2021/07/2...
Iyer visits Iran, Northern Ireland, Jerusalem, India, Kashmir, Sri Lanka, Japan, and Australia. Paradises are anything but so it seems. Too bad he left out Tahiti or Bora Bora- no civil wars there.
July 10, 2023
The book was more tedious than it should have been. It meandered along without any clear purpose or profound clarity. It seemed liked spurts of musings and while there are some good lines about the ideas around paradise, the writing is not cohesive. He name drops without point and assumes too much without offering the reader a deeper understanding on anything. He’s written better. This looks like his editors had a deadline.
January 2, 2023
I was lucky to receive an ARC, and I deeply enjoyed this book. A brilliant travel memoir which asks the question “what is paradise?”
Iyer takes us to the commonly known locations of earthly paradise and investigates. I recommend this book to travel fans and people who would like to dig a little bit deeper into the meaning of life.
Iyer takes us to the commonly known locations of earthly paradise and investigates. I recommend this book to travel fans and people who would like to dig a little bit deeper into the meaning of life.
June 28, 2023
Do you travel to find paradise or is it found within? For Pico Iyer the answer might be both. In this book, he offers dizzyingly beautiful descriptions of places like Sri Lanka, Kashmir, Ladakh, mountaintops of Japan, mosques in Iran, and temples and palaces in Varanasi. He visits these holy places that are not without turmoil, violence, and decay and ponders important questions about life and death. A spectacular book; every single sentence is gorgeous.
May 6, 2023
This is an interesting exploration of the concept of paradise in different religions and cultures. His travel writing is always fun to read. I listening to the audio version.
September 17, 2023
This book was a tough one to review. On one hand, it’s not a bad book at all. In fact, I think many people would enjoy this sort of book. It’s part travel book, part beautiful descriptions, and part philosophical musings on paradise. Unfortunately, it just wasn’t for me.
If I were to rate this book on quality, it probably would be a four-star read. But based on my own personal enjoyment, I had to rate it a bit lower. If you enjoy books that are atmospheric but don’t have too much of a “point,” you will probably enjoy this!
If I were to rate this book on quality, it probably would be a four-star read. But based on my own personal enjoyment, I had to rate it a bit lower. If you enjoy books that are atmospheric but don’t have too much of a “point,” you will probably enjoy this!
March 24, 2023
This relatively short book has something to surprise on nearly every page. It's one of those unusual books that starts out, as so many travel books do, as merely interesting, and turns into something much deeper by the end. You could call it a collection of essays on a theme, and certainly there's no indication that the places Iyer visited were visited recently or in the order presented, although you could read the book thinking that. What we have here, in part, is a work by a man who has spent decades traveling and is no longer content to simply report on wonderful and unusual destinations. Instead, he's looking deeper, finding new connections between the people and cultures he's encountering and humanity at large, and especially, the connections between humanity at large and he himself. Although he never says so outright, it's clear that he's feeling the approaching shadow of mortality and is no longer content to merely marvel at the surface of things, or to find patterns only a few levels deep. Hence the subtitle of the book, "In Search of Paradise." Not only are we individuals fated to fade away, but so are our cultures. What really, beneath all the bright diversity of people and places, undergirds this vast web called humanity?
Not that this book is at all difficult to read, or that it can't be experienced as travelogue. But late in the book, when Iyer happens to mention that he has spent much time with the Dalai Lama, traveling in his company on several occasions, I wasn't as surprised as I might have been.
Nevertheless I do recommend the book to those who are not looking for something deep; that's how I discovered it. I read the opening pages about Iyer getting off the plane in Tehran and liked his voice and didn't expect anything other than a fresh perspective on overlooked or misrepresented places. The full list of places visited and discussed, in addition to Iran, are North Korea; Kashmir; Broome, in Western Australia; Jerusalem; Ladakh, on the border of India and Tibet; Sri Lanka; Gokurabashi, Japan, an ancient cemetery near Osaka; and Varanasi. Although that last section is only 24 pages long, it let me imagine the place so vividly that my "memory" of it is as strong as my memory of places I've actually visited!
Highly recommended, whether you consider yourself a spiritual person or not.
Not that this book is at all difficult to read, or that it can't be experienced as travelogue. But late in the book, when Iyer happens to mention that he has spent much time with the Dalai Lama, traveling in his company on several occasions, I wasn't as surprised as I might have been.
Nevertheless I do recommend the book to those who are not looking for something deep; that's how I discovered it. I read the opening pages about Iyer getting off the plane in Tehran and liked his voice and didn't expect anything other than a fresh perspective on overlooked or misrepresented places. The full list of places visited and discussed, in addition to Iran, are North Korea; Kashmir; Broome, in Western Australia; Jerusalem; Ladakh, on the border of India and Tibet; Sri Lanka; Gokurabashi, Japan, an ancient cemetery near Osaka; and Varanasi. Although that last section is only 24 pages long, it let me imagine the place so vividly that my "memory" of it is as strong as my memory of places I've actually visited!
Highly recommended, whether you consider yourself a spiritual person or not.
Read
June 14, 2025Assuming one reads a page every two minutes, this wonderful little travelogue would take just around seven hours to complete. It is funny to me, then, that it took me a little over a year to finish. Not through any fault of Iyer’s, to be sure—his writing is clear and lucid, and he expresses his experiences with a passion and joy that leaps off the page.
It was more, I think, through the circumstances of me reading it; on trains, buses, stolen moments of quiet where I would take respite in Iyer’s words when I had the time. Mostly, I read it on holidays, times when I was travelling, and through the reading of other books this one did take me a while, I’ll admit.
December 29, 2024 my family and I are in Kyoto, where I know Iyer spends much of his time, and at the foot of the Fushimi Inari shrine we stumble upon a small coffee stand. While waiting for our drinks, my father points out the Pico Iyer poster on the wall, and we realize that this whole cafe is themed around him. I make a comment about what a coincidence it is that I am currently reading one of his books. The girl behind the window looks at the poster and says:
‘Oh, him? Yes, that’s my father.’
Papa and I exchange a glance of glee and surprise. What are the chances? What fortunate moments in life can we come to deserve?
It was more, I think, through the circumstances of me reading it; on trains, buses, stolen moments of quiet where I would take respite in Iyer’s words when I had the time. Mostly, I read it on holidays, times when I was travelling, and through the reading of other books this one did take me a while, I’ll admit.
December 29, 2024 my family and I are in Kyoto, where I know Iyer spends much of his time, and at the foot of the Fushimi Inari shrine we stumble upon a small coffee stand. While waiting for our drinks, my father points out the Pico Iyer poster on the wall, and we realize that this whole cafe is themed around him. I make a comment about what a coincidence it is that I am currently reading one of his books. The girl behind the window looks at the poster and says:
‘Oh, him? Yes, that’s my father.’
Papa and I exchange a glance of glee and surprise. What are the chances? What fortunate moments in life can we come to deserve?
December 10, 2023
Iyer is known as a brilliant travel writer and essayist, but in this volume he goes beyond those categories and blends travel writing, religious history, regional customs, and world politics into an exploration of what paradise can (and perhaps might) be. In somewhat fragmented form, he visits Iran, North Korea, the Himalayas, Australia, Japan, and India and explores the inner world as well as the cultural contexts for the meaning and location–both physical and metaphysical–of paradise. These essays are smart, humble, illuminating, and ultimately hopeful in a world so divided.
April 4, 2023
Please see my review at the Rumpus
Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy is probably the first book that comes to mind when one imagines a pilgrim’s travels in paradise. A virtual best-seller since it was penned in the early fourteenth century, the book is divided into three parts: hell, heaven, and the intermediary realm of purgatory. It’s interesting to consider how it has always been the part about hell that has garnered the most attention. Not just by scholars either—it seems most people are, as a general rule, more interested in hell than in heaven.
Why is it so seemingly difficult for us to imagine paradise?
Pico Iyer, in his new book, The Half Known Life: In Search of Paradise, embarks on a journey to find out. The first thing he realizes is that many of the Shangri-Las of the world are places fraught with issues. And some of these –like the Holy Land and Kashmir—are more like warzones. Iyer explains in the opening pages of the book that “after years of travel, I’d begun to wonder what kind of paradise can ever be found in a world of unceasing conflict—and whether the very search for it might not simply aggravate our differences.”
Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy is probably the first book that comes to mind when one imagines a pilgrim’s travels in paradise. A virtual best-seller since it was penned in the early fourteenth century, the book is divided into three parts: hell, heaven, and the intermediary realm of purgatory. It’s interesting to consider how it has always been the part about hell that has garnered the most attention. Not just by scholars either—it seems most people are, as a general rule, more interested in hell than in heaven.
Why is it so seemingly difficult for us to imagine paradise?
Pico Iyer, in his new book, The Half Known Life: In Search of Paradise, embarks on a journey to find out. The first thing he realizes is that many of the Shangri-Las of the world are places fraught with issues. And some of these –like the Holy Land and Kashmir—are more like warzones. Iyer explains in the opening pages of the book that “after years of travel, I’d begun to wonder what kind of paradise can ever be found in a world of unceasing conflict—and whether the very search for it might not simply aggravate our differences.”
July 17, 2023
3.5 stars
I immensely enjoyed the writing & following the author on his journey. It was a meandering narrative, with no real theme. The title’s a bit misleading but I had a fun time so not complaining.
I immensely enjoyed the writing & following the author on his journey. It was a meandering narrative, with no real theme. The title’s a bit misleading but I had a fun time so not complaining.
June 12, 2024
A lovely look all stopping the world with an open mind and an open heart.
July 30, 2023
2 1/2 Stars
Not what I was expecting. The author tells of his many travels throughout the world… mainly to various religious areas with multiple people-groups of varying beliefs. Most of these countries, currently or in their past, have had varying levels of conflict and strife. The book touches on some of these struggles and there are some profound observations.
Not what I was expecting. The author tells of his many travels throughout the world… mainly to various religious areas with multiple people-groups of varying beliefs. Most of these countries, currently or in their past, have had varying levels of conflict and strife. The book touches on some of these struggles and there are some profound observations.
November 18, 2023
Our struggle is our paradise.
January 23, 2023
I was a bit confused by his prose- it seemed as if he jumped around a lot. But I did find his sections on Sri Lanka interesting, since I was just there in December 2022.
August 30, 2023
In this book, Pico Iyer is in search of paradise. It is a book of reflections that explores competing ideas of paradise from both religious and secular traditions. He travels to the most unlikely places in this quest. Iran, North Korea, Northern Ireland, Kashmir, Sri Lanka, Japan, Jerusalem, Bali and Australia are the places where he seeks answers to finding paradise. Excluding Australia, Japan, and Bali, the other places have been plagued by conflicts. Is the author searching for bliss amid suffering and strife? The book turns out to be one where Iyer speculates on the best way to live one’s life, and how traveling and writing could help us in self-discovery. I liked the book more for Iyer’s ruminations on the various places he visits rather than things to do with paradise.
We begin in the city of Mashhad in Iran. Iyer finds Iran full of articulate souls, but the more they said, the less he could tell where they or he himself stood. This was in sharp contrast to his life in Japan, a country he finds the most inward and subtle culture he had ever met. The relationship between surface and depth is uncertain in Japan. Hence, he could never understand the fundamental aspects of things. People hold on to their privacy, saying little and expressing even less with their faces. He meets middle-class Iranian women, who are contacts suggested by his friends in California. The women claim most Iranians dream of going to the US, a land where everything is possible. For them, America is paradise. Iyer suggests it is human nature to imagine a place you have not seen as paradise.
Next stop is the ‘peoples’ paradise’, aka North Korea. Iyer is intrigued by the idea of a nation built around a secular ideology. He concedes he knows little about North Korea, even in this information age. His Korean guide seemed to know even less about the outside world. North Korea terrifies him because its people knew the world outside only in abstraction. It is easy to launch a nuclear missile against an abstraction. He wonders if we in the West, who live in full freedom, know any more about North Korea, either. Iyer doubts how much private life might be possible behind closed doors in North Korea. A man might be wary of expressing doubts even to his wife. Again, Iyer reflects on Japan in comparison. In Japan, his neighbours are content to play their parts in public life, if it helps sustain a safe, clean, harmonious society, from which almost everyone can benefit. But he finds Japan’s public life an orchestrated pantomime. He concedes his Japanese friends remain as brightly colored, passionate, often within their homes as they are self-effacing in the street. Iyer’s judgment seemed harsh to me. It is clear Japan is not his paradise.
We move on next to Northern Ireland. Iyer grew up in England in the 1970s and 80s. Belfast was in the news everyday then with bomb blasts and violence. I wonder what made him think of Belfast as a paradise candidate. Visiting Belfast, he calls it the spiritual home of civil war and that it is reviving itself by selling its bad name as a tourist attraction. Its endless conflicts are sold to outsiders as history. Iyer wonders if the locals in Belfast are acting out their animosities, like North Koreans do with the outside world.
The holy city of Jerusalem grabs a lot of Iyer’s attention. In Kashmir, Belfast, and Tibet, he believes the conflicts are about one belief system against another. In Jerusalem, the conflicts are internal and the fighting is not between traditions, but within them. Orthodox Jews oppose secular Jews. Sunni Muslims are ringed by Shia Muslims on all sides. Ultra-Orthodox Jews find common cause with the Palestine Liberation Organization on the principle that your enemy’s enemy is your friend. Iyer sees hope remaining in Jerusalem as stubborn as resentment. In the city, he notes a warning sign next to other ecumenical signs, saying, “Ancient Egyptians seldom entered temples. Like atomic reactors, they were complex and dangerous sources of power, requiring special decontamination procedures for those who enter them”!
Iyer finds Jerusalem a place where lines are drawn so that almost everything is a trespass. Taking notes on the Sabbath at the Western Wall is forbidden. A Greek woman upbraids him for standing with his hands joined behind his back in the Church of Holy Sepulchre. When he tries to walk up to the mosque on Temple Mount, guards stop him, saying visitors could no longer enter. Even Muslims can enter only after answering detailed questions on the Koran. Everything had significance and nothing was taken for granted. Iyer says once you turn off the main street, you are in holy turbulence! Jerusalem is a place where everyday morality and religion part ways on the grounds of irreconcilable differences. Right and wrong are immaterial here, because mortals cannot follow heavenly justice.
Iyer recounts a fascinating encounter with a young, quick-witted guide called Amir in Jerusalem. He and others hire Amir for a day-long tour of the places where Jesus spent his childhood. On the way, someone asks Amir how one could solve the problem of a country where two opposing groups have equal claim to the land beneath their feet. Amir counters he is confusing problems with issues. You solve problems but live with issues. He suggests Israelis will be okay so long as no one tries to solve their problems. As the day ends, Amir asks if everyone feels frustrated and confused. Some tourists confess in the affirmative. Amir then claims he has succeeded. They now understand how Israelis feel!
Sri Lanka is another place Iyer visits that is tormented by conflicts. Arabs described the island as ‘contiguous with the Garden of Eden’. The Portuguese, the Dutch and the British sailed away from there with ginger, wild indigo and seven kinds of wild cinnamon. The locals believe that the Buddha himself came to Sri Lanka thrice and to have proclaimed that the true home of his teachings was Lanka. However, today, nine of the parliament seats are held by Buddhist monks and they were the most passionate advocates for violence against Tamil separatists and Muslims. Iyer recalls the words of Thomas Merton, an American Christian monk, who was profoundly affected by Buddhism in Sri Lanka. Merton said he found what he was seeking by ceasing to ask questions. He cautioned about thinking we have all the answers. It could be an illusion because we may not be asking the right questions. Iyer concludes even monks need to accept uncertainty as central to life.
The book is stimulating to read as a travelogue. However, it lacks a deep discussion of the subjective nature of paradise or what it is in Iyer’s mind. I could not help thinking that Iyer’s search for paradise was the affluent man’s search. Iyer was born in Oxford, England and grew up in both England and Santa Barbara, California. He went to elite educational institutions in the US and the UK. Now, he is a successful author who lives both in California and Japan. Most people worldwide would wonder why he was searching for paradise, being born and living in it. For people of modest means, bliss is living without material anxieties, struggles, and burdens. The hundreds of thousands of migrants who flee violence and conflict in Central America see paradise as just getting basic security in their lives. They see the United States as that paradise. Italy is paradise for the refugees who risk their lives on leaky boats across the Mediterranean Sea. However, Iyer is not striving for such paradises, but a higher one. Is it one where dire conflicts do not exist? If so, he already has it in Santa Barbara and Kyoto. Is it a level of social cohesion where intimacy is natural even between strangers? Perhaps he can find it in poor villages around the world, but then they would also simmer underneath with class hostility. Iyer, with his philosophical bent of mind, would indeed know that paradise and happiness are largely internal to our minds than external to it. It is puzzling he seeks it in cities and towns around the contemporary world racked by conflict.
An unusual travel book with some philosophical insight.
We begin in the city of Mashhad in Iran. Iyer finds Iran full of articulate souls, but the more they said, the less he could tell where they or he himself stood. This was in sharp contrast to his life in Japan, a country he finds the most inward and subtle culture he had ever met. The relationship between surface and depth is uncertain in Japan. Hence, he could never understand the fundamental aspects of things. People hold on to their privacy, saying little and expressing even less with their faces. He meets middle-class Iranian women, who are contacts suggested by his friends in California. The women claim most Iranians dream of going to the US, a land where everything is possible. For them, America is paradise. Iyer suggests it is human nature to imagine a place you have not seen as paradise.
Next stop is the ‘peoples’ paradise’, aka North Korea. Iyer is intrigued by the idea of a nation built around a secular ideology. He concedes he knows little about North Korea, even in this information age. His Korean guide seemed to know even less about the outside world. North Korea terrifies him because its people knew the world outside only in abstraction. It is easy to launch a nuclear missile against an abstraction. He wonders if we in the West, who live in full freedom, know any more about North Korea, either. Iyer doubts how much private life might be possible behind closed doors in North Korea. A man might be wary of expressing doubts even to his wife. Again, Iyer reflects on Japan in comparison. In Japan, his neighbours are content to play their parts in public life, if it helps sustain a safe, clean, harmonious society, from which almost everyone can benefit. But he finds Japan’s public life an orchestrated pantomime. He concedes his Japanese friends remain as brightly colored, passionate, often within their homes as they are self-effacing in the street. Iyer’s judgment seemed harsh to me. It is clear Japan is not his paradise.
We move on next to Northern Ireland. Iyer grew up in England in the 1970s and 80s. Belfast was in the news everyday then with bomb blasts and violence. I wonder what made him think of Belfast as a paradise candidate. Visiting Belfast, he calls it the spiritual home of civil war and that it is reviving itself by selling its bad name as a tourist attraction. Its endless conflicts are sold to outsiders as history. Iyer wonders if the locals in Belfast are acting out their animosities, like North Koreans do with the outside world.
The holy city of Jerusalem grabs a lot of Iyer’s attention. In Kashmir, Belfast, and Tibet, he believes the conflicts are about one belief system against another. In Jerusalem, the conflicts are internal and the fighting is not between traditions, but within them. Orthodox Jews oppose secular Jews. Sunni Muslims are ringed by Shia Muslims on all sides. Ultra-Orthodox Jews find common cause with the Palestine Liberation Organization on the principle that your enemy’s enemy is your friend. Iyer sees hope remaining in Jerusalem as stubborn as resentment. In the city, he notes a warning sign next to other ecumenical signs, saying, “Ancient Egyptians seldom entered temples. Like atomic reactors, they were complex and dangerous sources of power, requiring special decontamination procedures for those who enter them”!
Iyer finds Jerusalem a place where lines are drawn so that almost everything is a trespass. Taking notes on the Sabbath at the Western Wall is forbidden. A Greek woman upbraids him for standing with his hands joined behind his back in the Church of Holy Sepulchre. When he tries to walk up to the mosque on Temple Mount, guards stop him, saying visitors could no longer enter. Even Muslims can enter only after answering detailed questions on the Koran. Everything had significance and nothing was taken for granted. Iyer says once you turn off the main street, you are in holy turbulence! Jerusalem is a place where everyday morality and religion part ways on the grounds of irreconcilable differences. Right and wrong are immaterial here, because mortals cannot follow heavenly justice.
Iyer recounts a fascinating encounter with a young, quick-witted guide called Amir in Jerusalem. He and others hire Amir for a day-long tour of the places where Jesus spent his childhood. On the way, someone asks Amir how one could solve the problem of a country where two opposing groups have equal claim to the land beneath their feet. Amir counters he is confusing problems with issues. You solve problems but live with issues. He suggests Israelis will be okay so long as no one tries to solve their problems. As the day ends, Amir asks if everyone feels frustrated and confused. Some tourists confess in the affirmative. Amir then claims he has succeeded. They now understand how Israelis feel!
Sri Lanka is another place Iyer visits that is tormented by conflicts. Arabs described the island as ‘contiguous with the Garden of Eden’. The Portuguese, the Dutch and the British sailed away from there with ginger, wild indigo and seven kinds of wild cinnamon. The locals believe that the Buddha himself came to Sri Lanka thrice and to have proclaimed that the true home of his teachings was Lanka. However, today, nine of the parliament seats are held by Buddhist monks and they were the most passionate advocates for violence against Tamil separatists and Muslims. Iyer recalls the words of Thomas Merton, an American Christian monk, who was profoundly affected by Buddhism in Sri Lanka. Merton said he found what he was seeking by ceasing to ask questions. He cautioned about thinking we have all the answers. It could be an illusion because we may not be asking the right questions. Iyer concludes even monks need to accept uncertainty as central to life.
The book is stimulating to read as a travelogue. However, it lacks a deep discussion of the subjective nature of paradise or what it is in Iyer’s mind. I could not help thinking that Iyer’s search for paradise was the affluent man’s search. Iyer was born in Oxford, England and grew up in both England and Santa Barbara, California. He went to elite educational institutions in the US and the UK. Now, he is a successful author who lives both in California and Japan. Most people worldwide would wonder why he was searching for paradise, being born and living in it. For people of modest means, bliss is living without material anxieties, struggles, and burdens. The hundreds of thousands of migrants who flee violence and conflict in Central America see paradise as just getting basic security in their lives. They see the United States as that paradise. Italy is paradise for the refugees who risk their lives on leaky boats across the Mediterranean Sea. However, Iyer is not striving for such paradises, but a higher one. Is it one where dire conflicts do not exist? If so, he already has it in Santa Barbara and Kyoto. Is it a level of social cohesion where intimacy is natural even between strangers? Perhaps he can find it in poor villages around the world, but then they would also simmer underneath with class hostility. Iyer, with his philosophical bent of mind, would indeed know that paradise and happiness are largely internal to our minds than external to it. It is puzzling he seeks it in cities and towns around the contemporary world racked by conflict.
An unusual travel book with some philosophical insight.
September 4, 2023
I always have a bias for Pico Iyer's writing, and many a time I end up reading his books at times when I need an alternate perspective. In The Half Known Life: In Search of Paradise, the search is for what different people define as paradise - a place with no worry or anxiety. Except, for some it is a particular place, for others a moment in time and something that can be accessed if we put our mind to it, and for some others it can only be enjoyed after death.
From Jerusalem to Benaras, and Japan to Ladakh, Pico explores these concepts and the people who believe in the different definitions. As is usually the case with his writing, it is as much introspection as it is travel, and written in wonderful prose. He blends his personal experiences with philosophical musings seamlessly. Through the people he meets, and his encounters with those from varied backgrounds, he reflects on the nature of life, and its many meanings.
In solitude and contemplation, he reaches out to thinkers before him- from the Stoics to William James to Henry David Thoreau, in an effort to decipher the complexities of our existence. Each essay is a meditation, and amidst the noise and chaos of this busy world, I'll probably pick it up again later in life to get a different rendition of the half-known truths that lie deep inside all of us.
From Jerusalem to Benaras, and Japan to Ladakh, Pico explores these concepts and the people who believe in the different definitions. As is usually the case with his writing, it is as much introspection as it is travel, and written in wonderful prose. He blends his personal experiences with philosophical musings seamlessly. Through the people he meets, and his encounters with those from varied backgrounds, he reflects on the nature of life, and its many meanings.
In solitude and contemplation, he reaches out to thinkers before him- from the Stoics to William James to Henry David Thoreau, in an effort to decipher the complexities of our existence. Each essay is a meditation, and amidst the noise and chaos of this busy world, I'll probably pick it up again later in life to get a different rendition of the half-known truths that lie deep inside all of us.
January 20, 2023
Persistently and achingly bad.
February 22, 2023
I've been looking forward to the latest Pico Iyer, and I fear great expectations led to greater disappointment.
It lacks focus. It read more like disparate chapters of exotic locations, with quotations of other, better known authors when they in turn visited the likes of Varanasi and Kashmir.
All in all, extremely missable and nowhere near the quality of his other works.
If "the half known life is where so many of our possibilities lie," then the reality of this book is merely half of what the imagined possibility was, to me.
And this is what drives us readers on to the next book, ever onwards. The possibility of transcendence is something we eternally strive for, glimpses of which were present in this book, half-formed.
It lacks focus. It read more like disparate chapters of exotic locations, with quotations of other, better known authors when they in turn visited the likes of Varanasi and Kashmir.
All in all, extremely missable and nowhere near the quality of his other works.
If "the half known life is where so many of our possibilities lie," then the reality of this book is merely half of what the imagined possibility was, to me.
And this is what drives us readers on to the next book, ever onwards. The possibility of transcendence is something we eternally strive for, glimpses of which were present in this book, half-formed.
Read
May 20, 2023decent read. Pico Iyer tours some religiously important sites, describes some locals he meets, and either starts rhapsodizing about the place or criticizing it. My main gripe is he seems to arrive at the place with preconceptions, based on how highly they already rate in his esteem. He doesn't seem to arrive at the place to be transformed, a pilgrim on an open-ended quest; defeating the 'search of paradise' narrative. It just seemed like another travel book that happened to select sites based on the association of birthplaces of proposed religions or secular utopias
March 25, 2023
Paradise cannot be found in a place, it only exists within ourselves.
“…each of us has the capacity, through the discerning use of our minds, to see past some of our ignorance and come to terms with life as it is.”
“…each of us has the capacity, through the discerning use of our minds, to see past some of our ignorance and come to terms with life as it is.”
March 2, 2024
The author's travels are undoubtedly extensive and impressive. The book contains some interesting and entertaining tales of these travels. {J}
Read
December 3, 2023Pico Iyer’s The Half Known Life: In Search of Paradise is a collection of travel narratives united by a spiritual journey theme. In ten connected essays, Iyer takes readers to places in Iran, Sri Lanka, India, Australia, North Korea, and elsewhere that are said to be paradisiacal. Some of these locations were considered to be paradise in the past while some still hold the designation for various believers. Ironically, most of the paradise locations are in the midst of chaos, violence, or squalor, although a few are tranquil.
Iyer is an excellent travel writer with an eye for detail and a gift for illuminating episodes that reveal the essence of a place and its people. I don’t think it’s much of a spoiler to say that Pico Iyer and many of the people encountered on his voyages insist that paradise is not a physical place out there somewhere; rather, paradise is within each of us. Such paradise is difficult to glimpse, let alone fully understand, which explains the book’s title. This internal paradise is elusive, but the search itself may be paradise, according to Iyer.
Iyer is an excellent travel writer with an eye for detail and a gift for illuminating episodes that reveal the essence of a place and its people. I don’t think it’s much of a spoiler to say that Pico Iyer and many of the people encountered on his voyages insist that paradise is not a physical place out there somewhere; rather, paradise is within each of us. Such paradise is difficult to glimpse, let alone fully understand, which explains the book’s title. This internal paradise is elusive, but the search itself may be paradise, according to Iyer.
December 15, 2023
This book is a travelogue with a philosophic bent. Iyer has traveled to most of the places on earth that are described as a "paradise" in his quest to discover just what exactly paradise means. He is a wonderful observer, and asks questions about how we can find peace in the midst of difficulty and suffering, why religion so often leads to contention, why so many seeming paradises end up being war zones, and whether paradise is possible in the here and now? In the end he concludes: "In this vision of an afterlife, the fact of things passing was not a cause for grief so much as a summons to attention. All the light or beauty we could find, we had to find right now. The fact that nothing lasts is the reason why everything matters...The thought that we must die..is the reason we must live well."
"your struggle is your paradise."
"your struggle is your paradise."
May 21, 2023
Iyer's thoughtful exploration of the concept of paradise focuses on the sense of locations bridging the physical and spiritual worlds. That is, holy places, not South Seas islands, though I genuinely was disappointed that he didn't consider Hawai'i, one of the most deeply spiritual places I've ever lived.
His prose truly sings in the chapter about Jerusalem, less so in describing Sri Lanka. But maybe the most interesting aspect of the book is the way he tries to reconcile the idea of paradise with the violence, poverty, and filth that permeates the allegedly most blessed places on earth.
This is the fifth book of his I've read and other than my little peeve above, I found it wonderfully engaging and satisfying.
His prose truly sings in the chapter about Jerusalem, less so in describing Sri Lanka. But maybe the most interesting aspect of the book is the way he tries to reconcile the idea of paradise with the violence, poverty, and filth that permeates the allegedly most blessed places on earth.
This is the fifth book of his I've read and other than my little peeve above, I found it wonderfully engaging and satisfying.
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