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Nor is it any surprise that Iyer’s journey ends in the realm of the afterlife - eternal paradise - visiting cemeteries in Sri Lanka and Japan (where they’re called “cities of tomorrow”) and the sacred Indian city of Varanasi.ĭeath is a recurring presence in the book, weighing heavily on Iyer’s mind in the time of COVID. But it’s not the only “promised land” he found threatening to erupt in violence and repression: There’s Iran, where the notion and word for paradise first evolved North Korea, with its state-sponsored “People’s Paradise” Belfast and Kashmir, caught in the crosshairs of sectarian divisions. Iyer’s own experience of Jerusalem, which he describes as “a riot of views of Paradise overlapping at crooked angles,” forms the crux of the book. And finding symmetries everywhere, which became a central theme in this.”

“And of course he went to the Holy Land: There he is in Jerusalem, reacting violently against it but going day after day to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, as I did. “I think of Melville as the laureate of the half-known spaces - What is God? What is the Devil? Do they exist? What’s out there? - so he was a good presence to walk along my side,” Iyer continues. “So it was almost a perfect time to think about 40 years of travel, 48 years of talking to the Dalai Lama, 31 years of spending time with Benedictine monks. “I was getting to stay in one place much longer than I normally would,” Iyer explains over Zoom from his “deepest home” outside Kyoto, Japan, as the sun rises on a clear winter morning. Though Iyer has made a career out of almost perpetual motion, he’s also no stranger to sitting still he frequents a monastery in Big Sur and has delivered a popular TED Talk on “ The Art of Stillness.” In some ways the pandemic was an ideal opportunity for him to stop and reflect on a lifetime of crisscrossing the globe. The author of more than a dozen books of far-flung travel - including “Video Night in Kathmandu,” “Falling Off the Map” and “ The Global Soul” - suddenly found himself holed up for long stretches at his mother’s house in Santa Barbara. Like many of us, Pico Iyer had a lot of time on his hands during the pandemic. If you buy books linked on our site, The Times may earn a commission from, whose fees support independent bookstores. The Half Known Life: In Search of Paradise