Books by Pico Iyer

The Lady and the Monk: Four Seasons in Kyoto

by Pico Iyer

When Pico Iyer decided to go to Kyoto and live in a monastery, he did so to learn about Zen Buddhism from the inside, to get to know Kyoto, one of the loveliest old cities in the world, and to find out something about Japanese culture today -- not the world of businessmen and production lines, but the traditional world of changing seasons and the silence of temples, of the images woven through literature, of the lunar Japan that still lives on behind the rising sun of geopolitical power.

All this he did. And then he met Sachiko.

Vivacious, attractive, thoroughly educated, speaking English enthusiastically if eccentrically, the wife of a Japanese "salaryman" who seldom left the office before 10 P.M., Sachiko was as conversant with tea ceremony and classical Japanese literature as with rock music, Goethe, and Vivaldi. With the lightness of touch that made Video Night in Kathmandu so captivating, Pico Iyer fashions from their relationship a marvelously ironic yet heartfelt book that is at once a portrait of cross-cultural infatuation -- and misunderstanding -- and a delightfully fresh way of seeing both the old Japan and the very new.

Abandon

by Blake Crouch, Pico Iyer

From the national bestselling author of The Half-Known Life comes an intoxicating novel that's at once a stylish intellectual mystery and a pulse-quickening love story—the love in question being at once sacred and profane.

John Macmillan, a classically reticent Englishman who has moved to California to study the poems of the Sufi mystic Rumi, unexpectedly becomes involved in two equally absorbing quests. The first is for a mysterious Rumi manuscript that may have been smuggled out of Iran; the second for the elusive Camilla Jensen, who continually offers herself to him only to repeatedly slip from his grasp. Are these quests somehow related? And can Macmillan give himself over to them without losing his career and identity?

Moving deftly from California academia to the mosques of Iran, filled with insights into the minds of Islam and the modern West, Abandon is a magic carpet-ride of a book.

Abandon

by Blake Crouch, Pico Iyer

On Christmas Day in 1893, every man, woman and child in a remote gold mining town disappeared, belongings forsaken, meals left to freeze in vacant cabins; and not a single bone was ever found. One hundred thirteen years later, two backcountry guides are hired by a history professor and his journalist daughter to lead them into the abandoned mining town so that they can learn what happened. With them is a psychic, and a paranormal photographer—as the town is rumored to be haunted. A party that tried to explore the town years ago was never heard from again. What this crew is about to discover is that twenty miles from civilization, with a blizzard bearing down, they are not alone, and the past is very much alive.

Sun After Dark: Flights Into the Foreign

by Pico Iyer

One of the best travel writers now at work in the English language brings back the sights and sounds from a dozen different frontiers. A cryptic encounter in the perfumed darkness of Bali; a tour of a Bolivian prison, conducted by an enterprising inmate; a nightmarish taxi ride across southern Yemen, where the men with guns may be customs inspectors or revolutionaries–these are just three of the stops on Pico Iyer’s latest itinerary.
But the true subject of Sun After Dark is the dislocations of the mind in transit. And so Iyer takes us along to meditate with Leonard Cohen and talk geopolitics with the Dalai Lama. He navigates the Magritte-like landscape of jet lag, “a place that no human had ever been until forty or so years ago.” And on every page of this poetic and provocative book, he compels us to redraw our map of the world.

The Man Within My Head

by Pico Iyer

We all carry people inside our heads—actors, leaders, writers, people out of history or fiction, met or unmet, who sometimes seem closer to us than people we know.

In The Man Within My Head, Pico Iyer sets out to unravel the mysterious closeness he has always felt with the English writer Graham Greene; he examines Greene’s obsessions, his elusiveness, his penchant for mystery. Iyer follows Greene’s trail from his first novel, The Man Within, to such later classics as The Quiet American and begins to unpack all he has in common with Greene: an English public school education, a lifelong restlessness and refusal to make a home anywhere, a fascination with the complications of faith. The deeper Iyer plunges into their haunted kinship, the more he begins to wonder whether the man within his head is not Greene but his own father, or perhaps some more shadowy aspect of himself.

Drawing upon experiences across the globe, from Cuba to Bhutan, and moving, as Greene would, from Sri Lanka in war to intimate moments of introspection; trying to make sense of his own past, commuting between the cloisters of a fifteenth-century boarding school and California in the 1960s, one of our most resourceful explorers of crossing cultures gives us his most personal and revelatory book.

The Man Within My Head

by Pico Iyer

Ever since he first discovered Graham Greene's work, Pico Iyer has felt a haunting closeness with the English writer. In The Man Within My Head, Iyer follows Greene's trail from his first novel, The Man Within, to such later classics as The Quiet American, examining Greene's obsessions, his elusiveness, and his penchant for mystery. The deeper he plunges into this exploration, the more Iyer begins to wonder whether the man within his head might not be Greene but his own father, or perhaps some more shadowy aspect of himself.

Drawing upon experiences across the globe, from Cuba to Bhutan, and moving, as Greene would, from Sri Lanka in war to intimate moments of introspection, this is the most personal and revelatory book yet from one of our most astute observers of inner journeys and crossing cultures.

The Open Road: The Global Journey of the Fourteenth Dalai Lama

by Pico Iyer

One of the most acclaimed and perceptive observers of globalism and Buddhism now gives us the first serious consideration—for Buddhist and non-Buddhist alike—of the Fourteenth Dalai Lama’s work and ideas as a politician, scientist, and philosopher.

Pico Iyer has been engaged in conversation with the Dalai Lama (a friend of his father’s) for the last three decades—an ongoing exploration of his message and its effectiveness. Now, in this insightful, impassioned book, Iyer captures the paradoxes of the Dalai Lama’s position: though he has brought the ideas of Tibet to world attention, Tibet itself is being remade as a Chinese province; though he was born in one of the remotest, least developed places on earth, he has become a champion of globalism and technology. He is a religious leader who warns against being needlessly distracted by religion; a Tibetan head of state who suggests that exile from Tibet can be an opportunity; an incarnation of a Tibetan god who stresses his everyday humanity.

Moving from Dharamsala, India—the seat of the Tibetan government-in-exile—to Lhasa, Tibet, to venues in the West, where the Dalai Lama’s pragmatism, rigor, and scholarship are sometimes lost on an audience yearning for mystical visions, The Open Road illuminates the hidden life, the transforming ideas, and the daily challenges of a global icon.

The Open Road: The Global Journey of the Fourteenth Dalai Lama (Vintage Departures)

by Pico Iyer

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • For Buddhists and non-Buddhists alike, “an exceptionally intimate portrait” (Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, Love) of the Dalai Lama—one of the most singular figures of our time.

For over three decades, Pico Iyer, one of our most cherished travel writers, has been a friend to the Dalai Lama. Over these years through intimate conversations, he has come to know him in a way that few can claim. Here he paints an unprecedented portrait of the Dalai Lama, explaining his work and ideas about politics, science, technology, and religion. The Open Road illuminates the hidden life and the daily challenges of this global icon.

Autumn Light: Season of Fire and Farewells

by Pico Iyer

Returning to his longtime home in Japan after his father-in-law’s sudden death, Pico Iyer picks up the steadying patterns of his everyday rites: going to the post office and engaging in furious games of ping-pong every evening. But in a country whose calendar is marked with occasions honoring the dead, he comes to reflect on changelessness in ways that anyone can relate to: parents age, children scatter, and Iyer and his wife turn to whatever can sustain them as everything falls away. As the maple leaves begin to turn and the heat begins to soften, Iyer shows us a Japan we have seldom seen before, where the transparent and the mysterious are held in a delicate balance, and where autumn reminds us to take nothing for granted.

Autumn Light: Season of Fire and Farewells

by Pico Iyer

In this “exquisite personal blend of philosophy and engagement, inner quiet and worldly life" (Los Angeles Times), an acclaimed author returns to his longtime home in Japan after his father-in-law’s sudden death and picks up the steadying patterns of his everyday rites, reminding us to take nothing for granted.

In a country whose calendar is marked with occasions honoring the dead, Pico Iyer comes to reflect on changelessness in ways that anyone can relate to: parents age, children scatter, and Iyer and his wife turn to whatever can sustain them as everything falls away. As the maple leaves begin to turn and the heat begins to soften, Iyer shows us a Japan we have seldom seen before, where the transparent and the mysterious are held in a delicate balance.

A Beginner's Guide to Japan: Observations and Provocations

by Pico Iyer

“Arguably the greatest living travel writer” (Outside 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 A Beginner’s Guide to Japan, 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
pique the interest and curiosity of those who don’t know Japan—and to remind those who do of its myriad fascinations.

Half Known Life

by Pico Iyer

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Aflame: Learning from Silence

by Pico Iyer

From the bestselling author of The Art of Stillness, a revelatory exploration of the abiding clarity and calm to be found in quiet retreat

Pico Iyer has made more than one hundred retreats over the past three decades to a small Benedictine hermitage high above the sea in Big Sur, California. He’s not a Christian—or a member of any religious group—but his life has been transformed by these periods of time spent in silence. That silence reminds him of what is essential and awakens a joy that nothing can efface. It’s not just freedom from distraction and noise and rush: it’s a reminder of some deeper truths he misplaced along the way.

In Aflame, Iyer connects with inner stillness and joy in his many seasons at the monastery, even as his life is going through constant change: a house burns down, a parent dies, a daughter is diagnosed with cancer. He shares the revelations he experiences, alongside wisdom from other nonmonastics who have learned from adversity and inwardness. And most profoundly, he shows how solitude can be a training in community and companionship. In so doing, he offers a unique outsider’s view of monastic life—and of a group of selfless souls who have dedicated their days to ensuring there’s a space for quiet and recollection that’s open to us all.

Radiant, intimate, and gripping, Aflame offers ageless counsel about the power of silence and what it can teach us about how to live, how to love, and, ultimately, how to die.

The Half Known Life: In Search of Paradise

by Pico Iyer

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.

Paradise: 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.

A Beginner's Guide to Japan: Observations and Provocations (Vintage Departures)

by Pico Iyer

“Arguably the greatest living travel writer” (Outside 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 A Beginner’s Guide to Japan, 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
pique the interest and curiosity of those who don’t know Japan—and to remind those who do of its myriad fascinations.

The Art of Stillness: Adventures in Going Nowhere (TED Books)

by Pico Iyer

A follow up to Pico Iyer’s essay “The Joy of Quiet,” The Art of Stillness considers the unexpected adventure of staying put and reveals a counterintuitive truth: The more ways we have to connect, the more we seem desperate to unplug.

Why might a lifelong traveler like Pico Iyer, who has journeyed from Easter Island to Ethiopia, Cuba to Kathmandu, think that sitting quietly in a room might be the ultimate adventure? Because in our madly accelerating world, our lives are crowded, chaotic and noisy. There’s never been a greater need to slow down, tune out and give ourselves permission to be still.

In The Art of Stillness—a TED Books release—Iyer investigate the lives of people who have made a life seeking stillness: from Matthieu Ricard, a Frenchman with a PhD in molecular biology who left a promising scientific career to become a Tibetan monk, to revered singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen, who traded the pleasures of the senses for several years of living the near-silent life of meditation as a Zen monk. Iyer also draws on his own experiences as a travel writer to explore why advances in technology are making us more likely to retreat. He reflects that this is perhaps the reason why many people—even those with no religious commitment—seem to be turning to yoga, or meditation, or seeking silent retreats. These aren't New Age fads so much as ways to rediscover the wisdom of an earlier age. Growing trends like observing an “Internet Sabbath”—turning off online connections from Friday night to Monday morning—highlight how increasingly desperate many of us are to unplug and bring stillness into our lives.

The Art of Stillness paints a picture of why so many—from Marcel Proust to Mahatma Gandhi to Emily Dickinson—have found richness in stillness. Ultimately, Iyer shows that, in this age of constant movement and connectedness, perhaps staying in one place is a more exciting prospect, and a greater necessity than ever before.

In 2013, Pico Iyer gave a blockbuster TED Talk. This lyrical and inspiring book expands on a new idea, offering a way forward for all those feeling affected by the frenetic pace of our modern world.

A Moveable Feast (Lonely Planet Travel Literature)

by Anthony Bourdain, Mark Kurlansky, Pico Iyer, Don George, Lonely Planet Publications Staff

Presents a collection of thirty-eight essays focusing on trips to various parts of the world and the role food plays during travels.

A Moveable Feast (Lonely Planet Travel Literature)

by Anthony Bourdain, Mark Kurlansky, Pico Iyer, Don George, Lonely Planet Publications Staff

Lonely Planet: The world's leading travel guide publisher*
Life-changing food adventures around the world.
From bat on the island of Fais to chicken on a Russian train to barbecue in the American heartland, from mutton in Mongolia to couscous in Morocco to tacos in Tijuana - on the road, food nourishes us not only physically, but intellectually, emotionally, and spiritually too. It can be a gift that enables a traveller to survive, a doorway into the heart of a tribe, or a thread that weaves an indelible tie; it can be awful or ambrosial - and sometimes both at the same time. Celebrate the riches and revelations of food with this 38-course feast of true tales set around the world.
Features stories by Anthony Bourdain, Andrew Zimmern, Mark Kurlansky, Matt Preston, Simon Winchester, Stefan Gates, David Lebovitz, Matthew Fort, Tim Cahill, Jan Morris and Pico Iyer. Edited by Don George.
About Lonely Planet: Started in 1973, Lonely Planet has become the world's leading travel guide publisher with guidebooks to every destination on the planet, as well as an award-winning website, a suite of mobile and digital travel products, and a dedicated traveller community. Lonely Planet's mission is to enable curious travellers to experience the world and to truly get to the heart of the places where they travel.
TripAdvisor Travellers' Choice Awards 2012 and 2013 winner in Favorite Travel Guide category
'Lonely Planet guides are, quite simply, like no other.' - New York Times
'Lonely Planet. It's on everyone's bookshelves, it's in every traveller's hands. It's on mobile phones. It's on the Internet. It's everywhere, and it's telling entire generations of people how to travel the world.' - Fairfax Media (Australia)
*#1 in the world market share - source: Nielsen Bookscan. Australia, UK and USA. March 2012-January 2013

Falling Off the Map: Some Lonely Places of The World

by Pico Iyer

The author of Video Night in Kathmandu ups the ante on himself in this sublimely evocative and acerbically funny tour through the world's loneliest and most eccentric places. From Iceland to Bhutan to Argentina, Iyer remains both uncannily observant and hilarious.

Lonely Planet Better than Fiction: True Travel Tales from Great Fiction Writers (Lonely Planet Travel Literature)

by Frances Mayes, Isabel Allende, Joyce Carol Oates, DBC Pierre, Marina Lewycka, Bryce Courtenay, Peter Matthiessen, Alexander McCall Smith, Jan Morris, Pico Iyer, Chris Pavone, Carol Birch, Don George, M. J. Hyland, Nikki Gemmell, Kurt Andersen, Keri Hulme, Steven Amsterdam, Charles Finch, Lloyd Jones, Téa Obreht, Peter Ho Davies, Stephen Kelman, Joe Yogerst, Steven Hall, Stefan Merrill Block, Suzanne Joinson, Sophie Cunningham, Keija Parssinen, Tom Carson, Mark Dapin, Aliya Whitely, Arnold Zable

"...a brilliant collection of travel stories...threaded with great warmth, as readers are invited to travel in the company of these famous authors and experience their passions and revelations." BOOKSELLER + PUBLISHER
We asked some of the world's most acclaimed fiction authors, including Isabel Allende, Peter Matthiessen, Alexander McCall Smith, Joyce Carol Oates, Tea Obreht and DBC Pierre, to describe their greatest non-fictional journeys. The 32 stories collected in Lonely Planet's Better than Fiction touch on everything from disorientation and revelation to disillusion and redemption.
However, these real-life tales all share one common characteristic: a passion for the precious gift that travel confers, from its unexpected but inevitably enriching lessons about other peoples and places, to the truths it reveals about ourselves. By turns funny, poignant and thought-provoking, you'll be transported from Azerbaijan to Vietnam, via Iceland, India, Samoa, Scotland, Antarctica, Alaska, Argentina, Nicaragua, Rome, Saudi Arabia, South Africa and beyond.
Edited by travel writer Don George.
Also available:
Lonely Planet Better than Fiction 2
About Lonely Planet: Lonely Planet is a leading travel media company and the world's number one travel guidebook brand, providing both inspiring and trustworthy information for every kind of traveller since 1973. Over the past four decades, we've printed over 145 million guidebooks and grown a dedicated, passionate global community of travellers. You'll also find our content online, on mobile, video and in 14 languages, 12 international magazines, armchair and lifestyle books, ebooks, and more.
TripAdvisor Travelers' Choice Awards 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015 and 2016 winner in Favorite Travel Guide category
'Lonely Planet guides are, quite simply, like no other.' - New York Times
'Lonely Planet. It's on everyone's bookshelves, it's in every traveller's hands. It's on mobile phones. It's on the Internet. It's everywhere, and it's telling entire generations of people how to travel the world.' - Fairfax Media (Australia)

The Lonely Planet Travel Anthology: True stories from the world's best writers (Lonely Planet Travel Literature)

by Ann Patchett, Francine Prose, Karen Joy Fowler, T.C. Boyle, Alexander McCall Smith, Pico Iyer, Torre DeRoche

Lonely Planet: The world's leading travel guide publisher
A collection of great travel writing by authors from around the globe, including original stories set in Scotland, Thailand, Malaysia, Moldova, Tanzania, Austria and beyond, edited by long-term Lonely Planet collaborator Don George.
The 35 impassioned stories included in this collection - of fortune tellers, tribal baboon hunters, a friendly Japanese family, and other notable characters - span a worldwide spectrum of themes, styles and settings, but all show how travel in its unexpected turns tests and teaches us, making us aware that we are resilient, that we are not alone, and that there is so much love and connection to be had if we open ourselves up. This collection affirms that if we follow the compass of the heart, we will always find our way. Whether you read the book on the road or in an armchair at home, these tales are sure to entertain, amuse and inform you, and resonate long after the book is finished.
'As you travel through these pages, may your mind be widened, your spirit enlivened, and your own path illuminated by these worldly word-journeys.' --Don George
With sparkling contributions from some of the most acclaimed names in contemporary fiction and travel writing plus some new voices from around the world, including:
Ann Patchett, Francine Prose, TC Boyle, Karen Joy Fowler, Pico Iyer, Torre DeRoche, Blane Bachelor, Rebecca Dinerstein, Jan Morris, Elizabeth George, Jane Hamilton, Alexander McCall Smith, Keija Parssinen, Mridu Khullar Relph, Yulia Denisyuk, Emily Koch, Carissa Kasper, Jessica Silber, Candace Rose Rardon, Marilyn Abildskov, Shannon Leone Fowler, Robin Cherry, Robert Twigger, Porochista Khakpour, Natalie Baszile, Suzy Joinson, Anthony Sattin, LH McMillin, Bridget Crocker, Maggie Downs, Bishwanath Ghosh, Jeff Greenwald, James Dorsey and Tahir Shah.
About Lonely Planet: Started in 1973, Lonely Planet has become the world's leading travel guide publisher with guidebooks to every destination on the planet, gift and lifestyle books and stationery, as well as an award-winning website, magazines, a suite of mobile and digital travel products, and a dedicated traveller community. Lonely Planet's mission is to enable curious travellers to experience the world and to truly get to the heart of the places they find themselves in.
'Lonely Planet guides are, quite simply, like no other.' - New York Times
'Lonely Planet. It's on everyone's bookshelves, it's in every traveller's hands. It's on mobile phones. It's on the Internet. It's everywhere, and it's telling entire generations of people how to travel the world.' - Fairfax Media (Australia)

Lonely Planet by the Seat of My Pants

by Simon Winchester, Jan Morris, Pico Iyer, Tim Cahill, Joshua Clark, Sean Condon, Wickham Boyle, Danny Wallace

Lonely Planet: The world's leading travel guide publisher

Humorous tales of travel and misadventure.

Lonely Planet knows that some of life's funniest experiences happen on the road. Whether they take the form of unexpected detours, unintended adventures, unidentifiable dinners or unforgettable encounters, they can give birth to our most found travel lessons, and our most memorable - and hilarious - travel stories.

These 31 globegirdling tales that run the gamut from close-encounter safaris to loss-of-face follies, hair-raising rides to culture-leaping brides, eccentric expats to mind-boggling repasts, wrong roads taken to agreements mistaken. The collection brings together some of the world's most renowned travellers and storytellers with previously unpublished writers.

Includes stories by Wickam Boyle, Tim Cahill, Joshua Clark, Sean Condon, Chistopher R.Cox, David Downie, Holly Erikson, Bill Fink, Don George, Karl Taro Greenfeld, Jeff Grenwald, Pico Iyer, Amanda Jones, Kathie Kertesz, Doug Lansky, Alexander Ludwick, Linda Watanabe McFerrin, Jan Morris, Brooke Neill, Rolf Potts, Laura Resau, Michelle Richmond, Alana Semuels, Deborah Steg, Judy Tierney, Edwin Tucker, Jeff Vize, Danny Wallace, Kelly Watton, Simon Wichester, Michelle Witton

About Lonely Planet: Started in 1973, Lonely Planet has become the world's leading travel guide publisher with guidebooks to every destination on the planet, as well as an award-winning website, a suite of mobile and digital travel products, and a dedicated traveller community. Lonely Planet's mission is to enable curious travellers to experience the world and to truly get to the heart of the places where they travel.

TripAdvisor Travellers' Choice Awards 2012 and 2013 winner in Favorite Travel Guide category

'Lonely Planet guides are, quite simply, like no other.' - New York Times

'Lonely Planet. It's on everyone's bookshelves, it's in every traveller's hands. It's on mobile phones. It's on the Internet. It's everywhere, and it's telling entire generations of people how to travel the world.' - Fairfax Media (Australia)

*#1 in the world market share - source: Nielsen Bookscan. Australia, UK and USA. March 2012-January 2013

Lonely Planet Tales from Nowhere

by Simon Winchester, Pam Houston, Pico Iyer, Tim Cahill, Anthony Sattin, Jason Elliot, Rolf Potts, Danny Wallace

Lonely Planet: The world's leading travel guide publisher*

Unexpected stories from unexpected places.

Many places can feel like nowhere: a desert, an isolated village, even the middle of a bustling, impersonal city. And then something happens: an adventure, a revelation, an experience that changes the whole landscape. The discovery that every place is the centre of the world to somebody and has its own riches and wonders. The authors of these 30 real-life tales find passion, surprise and illumination in the middle of Borneo or Beijing, in a Mayan mountain village, along a timeworn trail in Tuscany, on an isolated South Pacific island, or under a desert moon in Mali.

These richly varied stories all celebrate and illuminate one simple truth: if we embark on each adventure with an open heart and an open mind, travel will take us places we never planned to go, and enrich and enlighten us in ways we never otherwise would have known.

Featuring stories by:Anthony Sattin, Danny Wallace, Jason Elliot, Pam Houston, Ralph Potts, Pico Iyer, Tim Cahill, Simon Winchester

About Lonely Planet:Started in 1973, Lonely Planet has become the world's leading travel guide publisher with guidebooks to every destination on the planet, as well as an award-winning website, a suite of mobile and digital travel products, and a dedicated traveller community. Lonely Planet's mission is to enable curious travellers to experience the world and to truly get to the heart of the places where they travel.

TripAdvisor Travellers' Choice Awards 2012 and 2013 winner in Favorite Travel Guide category

'Lonely Planet guides are, quite simply, like no other.' - New York Times

'Lonely Planet. It's on everyone's bookshelves, it's in every traveller's hands. It's on mobile phones. It's on the Internet. It's everywhere, and it's telling entire generations of people how to travel the world.' - Fairfax Media (Australia)

*#1 in the world market share - source: Nielsen Bookscan. Australia, UK and USA. March 2012-January 2013

Carnival of Dreams

by Terry Gilliam, Pico Iyer, Basil Pao

A study of the work of celebrated Hong Kong photographer and designer Basil Pao.



Carnival of Dreams offers a glimpse into the wide-ranging, fifty-year career of the internationally renowned Hong Kong photographer and designer through his work in collages and photomontages. From his early album covers when he was an art director and designer for the music industry in New York, Los Angeles, and London in the 1970s, through his diverse international assignments and personal works, to his most recent exhibition in Hong Kong, the story encompasses his long journey from cut-and-paste collages to the computer-composited photomontages of dreamscapes in this Carnival of Dreams.