>14GTR: /* External links */ Amended category

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{{Use dmy dates|date=June 2016}}
{{Use British English|date=March 2012}}
{{Infobox writer 
| name = Pico Iyer
| image = Pico Iyer 2.08.12 (6847745503).jpg
| image_size =
| caption = Iyer in 2012
| birth_name = Siddharth Pico Raghavan Iyer<ref name="UofC" />
| birth_date = {{Birth date and age|df=yes|1957|02|11}}<ref name=national12 />
| birth_place = [[Oxford]], England
| occupation = [[Essayist]], [[novelist]]
| genre = [[Non-fiction]]/[[fiction]]
| relatives = [[Raghavan N. Iyer]] (father, deceased)<br /> Nandini Iyer (mother)<br /> Hiroko Takeuchi (wife)
| awards = [[Guggenheim Fellowship]], 2005 Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters, [[Chapman University]] 2017.
| website = {{URL|picoiyerjourneys.com}}
}}

'''Siddharth Pico Raghavan Iyer''' (born 11 February 1957), known as '''Pico Iyer''', is a British-born [[essay]]ist and [[novelist]] known for his [[travel writing]]. He is the author of numerous books on crossing cultures including ''Video Night in Kathmandu'', ''The Lady and the Monk'' and ''[[The Global Soul]]''. He has been a contributor to ''[[Time (magazine)|Time]],'' ''[[Harper's Magazine|Harper's]]'', ''[[The New York Review of Books]]'', and ''[[The New York Times]]''.

==Early life==
Iyer was born Siddharth Pico Raghavan Iyer in [[Oxford]], England, the son of Indian parents. His father was [[Raghavan N. Iyer]], a [[philosopher]] and [[political theorist]] then enrolled in doctoral studies at the [[University of Oxford]].<ref name="UofC">[http://content.cdlib.org/xtf/view?docId=hb238nb0fs&doc.view=content&chunk.id=div00039&toc.depth=1&brand=calisphere&anchor.id=0 "Raghavan Iyer, Political Science: Santa Barbara, 1930-1995"], Calisphere, University of California.</ref><ref>Rukun Advani, [https://web.archive.org/web/20040117000342/http://www.hindu.com/thehindu/mag/2003/04/27/stories/2003042700130200.htm "Mahatma for Sale"], ''The Hindu,'' 27 April 2003.</ref> His mother is the religious scholar Nandini Nanak Mehta.<ref name="UofC" /> He is the great-great-grandson of Indian Gujarati writer [[Mahipatram Rupram Nilkanth|Mahipatram Nilkanth]].<ref name="John 2013">{{cite web | last=John | first=Paul | title=The itchy feet gene | website=The Times of India | date=8 December 2013 | url=http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/home/sunday-times/The-itchy-feet-gene/articleshow/27052365.cms | access-date=20 February 2017}}</ref><ref>{{Cite news|url=http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/ahmedabad/Pico-Iyers-Gujarati-genes-revealed/articleshow/27055934.cms|title=Pico Iyer's Gujarati genes revealed|last=Paul|first=John|newspaper=The Times of India|access-date=2017-02-20}}</ref> Both of his parents grew up in India then went to England for tertiary education.<ref name=hum>{{cite web |title=Pico Iyer: On Travel and Travel Writing |publisher=World Hum |url=http://www.worldhum.com/features/travel-interviews/pico_iyer_travel_writing_20061104/ |date=30 November 2006 |access-date=27 September 2013}}</ref> His name is a combination of the Buddha's name, [[Siddhartha Buddha|Siddhartha]] and that of the Italian [[Renaissance philosophy|Renaissance philosopher]] [[Giovanni Pico della Mirandola|Pico della Mirandola]].<ref name="onbeing.org">{{Cite web|title=Pico Iyer — The Urgency of Slowing Down|url=https://onbeing.org/programs/pico-iyer-the-urgency-of-slowing-down-nov2018/|access-date=2020-10-03|website=The On Being Project|language=en-US}}</ref>

When Iyer was seven, in 1964, his family moved to California, when his father started working with the [[Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions]], a [[California]]-based think tank, and started teaching at [[University of California, Santa Barbara]].<ref name=hum /><ref name=ind>{{cite news |last=Tam Dalyell |author-link=Tam Dalyell |title=OBITUARY:Raghavan Iyer |url=https://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/obituaryraghavan-iyer-1590756.html |access-date=27 September 2013 |newspaper=[[The Independent]] |location=London |date=10 July 1995}}</ref><ref name=nyt>{{cite news |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1995/06/24/obituaries/raghavan-narasimhan-iyer-65-an-expert-on-east-west-cultures.html |work=The New York Times |first=Wolfgang |last=Saxon |title=Raghavan Narasimhan Iyer, 65, An Expert on East-West Cultures |date=24 June 1995}}</ref> For over a decade, Iyer moved between schools and college in England and his parents' home in California.<ref name="onbeing.org"/>

He was a King's Scholar at [[Eton College]], was awarded a congratulatory double first in English literature at [[Magdalen College, Oxford]] in 1978, and then received an [[Master of Arts|A.M.]] in literature from [[Harvard University]] in 1980. He received the [[Oxbridge MA|Oxbridge M.A.]] in 1982. In 2017, along with [[Plácido Domingo]] and [[Mario Vargas Llosa]], he was awarded an honorary doctorate (in Humane Letters) by [[Chapman University]].{{Citation needed|date=October 2020}}

==Career==
Iyer taught writing and literature at Harvard before joining ''[[Time (magazine)|Time]]'' in 1982 as a writer on world affairs. Since then he has travelled widely, from [[North Korea]] to [[Easter Island]], and from [[Paraguay]] to [[Ethiopia]], while writing works of non-fiction and two novels, including ''Video Night in Kathmandu'' (1988), ''The Lady and the Monk'' (1991), ''The Global Soul'' (2000) and ''The Man Within My Head'' (2012). He is also a frequent speaker at literary festivals and universities around the world. He delivered popular TED talks in 2013, 2014, 2016 and 2019 [see ted.com] and has twice been a Fellow at the World Economic Forum in Davos. He appeared in a commercial for "Incredible India" in 2007.{{Citation needed|date=October 2020}}

In 2019, he served as Ferris Professor of Journalism at Princeton University, Guest Director of the Telluride Film Festival.<ref>{{Cite web|title=Pico Iyer — Journalism|url=https://journalism.princeton.edu/people/pico-iyer/|access-date=2020-10-03|website=journalism.princeton.edu}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|last=|first=|title=46th Annual Telluride Film Festival: Guest Director Pico Iyer|url=https://www.tellurideinside.com/2019/06/46th-annual-telluride-film-festival-guest-director-pico-iyer.html|access-date=2020-10-03|website=Telluride Inside... and Out|language=en-US}}</ref> He was also the first writer-in-residence at Raffles Hotel Singapore, where he released his book ''This Could be Home (2019)'', which explores Singapore's heritage through its landmarks.<ref>{{Cite web|title=Raffles Writers Residency - Pico Iyer {{!}} British Council Singapore|url=https://www.britishcouncil.sg/programmes/arts/literary-arts/raffles-writers-residency-pico-iyer|access-date=2020-10-03|website=www.britishcouncil.sg|language=en}}</ref>

== Writing themes ==
Iyer's writings build on his growing up in a combination of English, American, and Indian cultures. Travel is a key theme in most of his works. In one of his works, The Global Soul (2000) he takes on the international airport as a central subject, along with associated jet lag, displacement and cultural mingling. As a travel writer, he often writes of living between the cracks and outside fixed categories. Many of his books have been about trying to see from within some society or way of life, but from an outsider's perspective. He has filed stories from Bhutan, Nepal, Ethiopia, Cuba, Argentina, Japan, and North Korea<ref>{{Cite web|title=Pico Iyer|url=https://www.gouldcenter.org/pico-iyer|access-date=2020-10-03|website=The Gould Center for Humanistic Studies|language=en-US}}</ref> Some of the topics that he explores in his works include revolution in Cuba, [[Mysticism|Sufism]], [[Buddhism|Buddhist]] [[Kyoto]], and global disorientation. In his own words from a 1993 article in ''[[Harper's Magazine|Harper's]]'', ''"I am a multinational soul on a multinational globe on which more and more countries are as polyglot and restless as airports. Taking planes seems as natural to me as picking up the phone or going to school; I fold up my self and carry it around as if it were an overnight bag."''<ref>April 1993 issue of ''Harper's.''</ref> His writing alternating between the monastery and the airport, the Indian writer Pradeep Sebastian writes about Iyer, as ''"[[Thomas Merton]] on a frequent flier pass aiming to bring new global energies and possibilities into non-fiction"''.<ref>''The Hindu,'' 7 November 2006.</ref>

He has written numerous pieces on world affairs for ''[[Time (magazine)|Time]]'', including cover stories, and the "Woman of the Year" story on [[Corazon Aquino]] in 1986.<ref>[https://archive.today/20130204074836/http://search.time.com/results.html?N=4294919515 List of articles] in ''Time''.</ref><ref>{{Cite news|author=Pico Iyer|date=5 January 1987|title=Corazon Aquino|work=Time Magazine|url=http://www.time.com/time/subscriber/personoftheyear/archive/stories/1986.html|url-status=dead|access-date=26 March 2008|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071220000538/http://www.time.com/time/subscriber/personoftheyear/archive/stories/1986.html|archive-date=20 December 2007|df=dmy-all}}</ref> He has written on literature for ''[[The New York Review of Books]]''; on globalism for ''Harper's''; on travel for the ''[[Financial Times]]''; and on many other themes for ''[[The New York Times]]'', ''[[National Geographic (magazine)|National Geographic]]'', ''[[The Times Literary Supplement]]'', contributing up to a hundred articles a year to various publications.<ref>program for Dalai Lama appearance at New York Town Hall, May 2009.</ref> He has contributed liner-notes for four Leonard Cohen albums. His books have appeared in 23 languages so far, including Turkish, Russian, and [[Indonesian language|Indonesian]]. He has also written introductions to more than 70 books, including works by [[R. K. Narayan]], [[Somerset Maugham]], [[Graham Greene]], [[Michael Ondaatje]], [[Peter Matthiessen]], and [[Isamu Noguchi]].<ref>Full listing at [http://picoiyerjourneys.com/index.php/about/ "About Pico Iyer"], picoiyerjourneys.com.</ref> He also writes regularly on sport, film, religion and the convergence of mysticism and globalism.{{Citation needed|date=October 2020}}

He has appeared seven times in the annual ''Best Spiritual Writing'' anthology,<ref>Volumes for 1999, 2000, 2004, 2006, 2008, 2010, 2011, 2012.</ref> and three times in the annual ''Best American Travel Writing'' anthology,<ref>Volumes for 2001, 2006, 2012.</ref> and has served as guest editor for both.<ref>Best American Travel Writing 2004; Best Spiritual Writing 2010.</ref> He has also appeared in the ''Best American Essays'' anthology.<ref>2011 edition.</ref>

The ''[[Utne Reader]]'' named him in 1995 as one of 100 Visionaries worldwide who could change your life,<ref>''Utne Reader,'' January/February 1995.</ref> while the ''[[The New Yorker|New Yorker]]'' observed that ''"As a guide to far-flung places, Pico Iyer can hardly be surpassed."''<ref>''The New Yorker,'' May 1997 issue on Indian writing, "Briefly Noted".{{Page needed|date=January 2012}}</ref>

==Personal life==
Iyer has been based since 1992 in [[Nara, Nara|Nara]], Japan,<ref>{{cite web |title=About Pico Iyer |publisher=Pico Iyer Journeys |url=http://picoiyerjourneys.com/index.php/about/ |access-date=27 September 2013}}</ref> where he lives with his Japanese wife, Hiroko Takeuchi,<ref name=national12>{{cite web |title=Being Greene: Pico Iyer evokes his 'literary father' in The Man Within My Head |publisher=National Post |url=http://arts.nationalpost.com/2012/02/13/being-greene-pico-iyer-evokes-his-literary-father-in-the-man-within-my-head/ |author=Mark Medley |date=13 February 2012 |access-date=27 September 2013 |url-status=dead |archive-url=http://webarchive.loc.gov/all/20120216183417/http://arts.nationalpost.com/2012/02/13/being%2Dgreene%2Dpico%2Diyer%2Devokes%2Dhis%2Dliterary%2Dfather%2Din%2Dthe%2Dman%2Dwithin%2Dmy%2Dhead/ |archive-date=16 February 2012 |df=dmy-all }}</ref><ref name="Iyer2008 274">Iyer 2008, p. 274.</ref> and her two children from an earlier marriage. His book, ''The Lady and the Monk (1991)'', was a memoir and a reflection of his relationship with Takeuchi.<ref>{{Cite web|last=Altman|first=Anna|title=Pico Iyer's Japanese Love Story, from Spring to "Autumn Light"|url=https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/pico-iyers-japanese-love-story-from-spring-to-autumn-light|access-date=2020-10-03|website=The New Yorker|language=en-us}}</ref> His family home in [[Santa Barbara, California|Santa Barbara]] burned down due to a wildfire in 1990. Reflecting on this event, in his words, ''“For more and more of us, home has really less to do with a piece of soil, than you could say, with a piece of soul.”'' He splits his time between Japan, and California. Asked if he feels rooted and accepted as a foreigner (regarding his current life in Japan) Iyer notes:<blockquote>''"Japan is therefore an ideal place because I never will be a true citizen here, and will always be an outsider, however long I live here and however well I speak the language. And the society around me is as comfortable with that as I am… I am not rooted in a place, I think, so much as in certain values and affiliations and friendships that I carry everywhere I go; my home is both invisible and portable. But I would gladly stay in this physical location for the rest of my life, and there is nothing in life that I want that it doesn’t have."''<ref>Brenner, Angie; [http://www.wildriverreview.com/worldvoices-picoiyer.php "Global Writer, Heart & Soul – Interview with Pico Iyer"], ''[[Wild River Review]]'', 19 November 2007.</ref>
</blockquote>

Iyer has known the [[14th Dalai Lama]] since he was in his late teens, when he accompanied his father to [[Dharamshala]], India, in 1974. In discussions about his spirituality, Iyer has mentioned not having a formal meditation practice, but practicing regular solitude, visiting a remote hermitage near [[Big Sur]] several times a year.<ref name="On Being with Krista Tippett">{{cite web|title=Pico Iyer Journeys|url=https://picoiyerjourneys.com/|access-date=21 March 2020|website=Pico Iyers Journeys}}</ref>

{{Clear}}

==Bibliography==
{{Expand list|date=January 2016}}

===Books===

* {{cite book |author=Iyer, Pico |title=The recovery of innocence |year=1984 |location=London |publisher=Concord Grove Press  }}
* {{cite book |author=Iyer, Pico |author-mask=1 |title=Video night in Kathmandu : and other reports from the not-so-far East |date=July 1988 |publisher=Knopf |isbn=0-394-55027-7 |location=New York }}
* {{cite book |author=Iyer, Pico |author-mask=1 |title=The lady and the monk : four seasons in Kyoto |date=August 1991 |publisher=Knopf |isbn=978-0-679-40308-1 |location=New York }}
* {{cite book |author=Iyer, Pico |author-mask=1 |title=Falling off the map : some lonely places of the world |date=April 1993 |publisher=Vintage Books |isbn=0-679-74612-9  |location=New York }}
* {{cite book |author=Iyer, Pico |author-mask=1 |title=Cuba and the night : a novel |date=April 1995 |publisher=Knopf |isbn=0-679-44052-6 |location=New York }}
* {{cite book |author=Iyer, Pico |author-mask=1 |title=Tropical classical : Essays from Several Directions |date=April 1997 |publisher=A.A. Knopf |isbn=0-679-45432-2 |location=New York }}
* {{cite book |author=Iyer, Pico |author-mask=1 |title=The global soul : jet lag, shopping malls, and the search for home |date=February 2000 |publisher=Knopf |isbn=0-679-45433-0 |location=New York }}
* {{cite book |author=Iyer, Pico |author-mask=1 |title=Imagining Canada : an outsider's hope for a global future |date=January 2001 |publisher=Hart House, University of Toronto |isbn=0-9694382-1-4 |location=Toronto }}
* {{cite book |author=Iyer, Pico |author-mask=1 |title=Abandon : a romance |date=April 2004 |publisher=Vintage Books |isbn=1-4000-3085-4 |location=New York }}
* {{cite book |author=Iyer, Pico |author-mask=1 |title=Sun after dark : flights into the foreign |date=2004 |publisher=Alfred A. Knopf |isbn=0-375-41506-8 |location=New York }}
* {{cite book |author=Iyer, Pico |author-mask=1 |title=The open road : the global journey of the fourteenth Dalai Lama |date=2008 |publisher=Alfred A. Knopf |isbn=978-0-307-26760-3 |location=New York }}
* {{cite book |author=Iyer, Pico |author-mask=1 |title=The man within my head |date=2012 |publisher=Alfred A. Knopf |isbn=978-0-307-26761-0 |location=New York }}
* {{cite book |author=Iyer, Pico |author-mask=1 |title=The art of stillness : adventures in going nowhere|others=Eydís Einarsd´óttir |date=4 November 2014 |isbn=978-1-4767-8472-4 |edition=First TED books hardcover |location=New York }}
* {{cite book |author=Iyer, Pico |author-mask=1 |title=Autumn light : season of fire and farewells|year=2019 |isbn=978-0-451-49393-4 |edition=First |location=New York }}
* {{cite book |author=Iyer, Pico |author-mask=1 |title=This could be home : Raffles Hotel and the city of tomorrow |date=30 July 2019 |isbn=978-1-912098-55-2 |location=Singapore }}
* {{cite book |author=Iyer, Pico |author-mask=1 |title=A beginner's guide to Japan : observations and provocations |date=2 June 2020 |isbn=978-1-101-97347-9 |edition=First Vintage Departures |location=New York }}

===Essays===
*{{cite journal |author=Iyer, Pico |date=12 January 2015 |title=Whispers from a friend |journal=[[Outlook (Indian magazine)|Outlook]] |volume=55 |issue=1 |pages=20–22 |url=http://www.outlookindia.com/article/whispers-from-a-friend/292929 |access-date=6 January 2016}}

===Book reviews===
{|class='wikitable sortable' width='90%'
|-
!|Year
!class='unsortable'|Review article
!class='unsortable'|Work(s) reviewed
|-
|2007
|{{cite journal |author=Iyer, Pico |df=mdy |date=June 28, 2007 |title='A new kind of mongrel fiction' |journal=The New York Review of Books |volume=54 |issue=11 |pages=36–37, 40–41}}
|{{cite book |author=Ondaatje, Michael |authorlink=Michael Ondaatje |title=[[Divisadero (novel)|Divisadero]] |location= |publisher=McClelland and Stewart |year=2007 }}
|}

===Selected introductions===
* [[Graham Greene]], ''The Complete Stories''
* [[Peter Matthiessen]], ''[[The Snow Leopard]]''
* [[Somerset Maugham]], ''The Skeptical Romancer'' (editor/writer of introduction)
* [[R.K. Narayan]], ''[[A Tiger for Malgudi]]'', ''[[The Man-Eater of Malgudi]]'', and ''[[The Vendor of Sweets]]''
* [[Michael Ondaatje]], ''[[The English Patient]]''
* [[Hermann Hesse]], ''[[Siddhartha (novel)|Siddhartha]]'' ([[Peter Owen Publishers]] in London brought this out in August 2012)
* [[Arto Paasilinna]], ''[[The Year of the Hare (novel)|The Year of the Hare]]''
* [[Frederic Prokosch]], ''The Asiatics''
* [[Donald Richie]], ''The Inland Sea''
* [[Nicolas Rothwell]], ''Wings of the Kite-Hawk''
* [[Huston Smith]], ''Tales of Wonder''
* [[Lawrence Weschler]], ''A Wanderer in the Perfect City''
* [[Natsume Soseki]], ''[[The Gate (novel)|The Gate]]'' (2012)

==Notes==
{{Reflist|26em}}

==Further consideration==
*{{cite web |last1=Strayed |first1=Cheryl |title=‘Joyful Participation in a World of Sorrows’ |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/15/podcasts/sugar-calling-pico-iyer-coronavirus.html |website=[[The New York Times]] |date=15 April 2020}}

==External links==
* [http://picoiyerjourneys.com/ picoiyerjourneys.com – Official website]
* [http://blog.colinmarshall.org/?p=1228 An interview with Pico Iyer in Nara, Japan] on ''Notebook on Cities and Culture''
* [http://blog.colinmarshall.org/?p=502 An interview with Pico Iyer in Los Angeles] on ''Notebook on Cities and Culture''
* {{TED speaker}}
* Pico Iyer, [http://www.bbc.com/travel/story/20170413-the-mysterious-man-who-gave-me-japan "The mysterious man who gave me Japan"], BBC Travel, 20 April 2017.

{{Authority control}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Iyer, Pico}}
[[Category:1957 births]]
[[Category:Living people]]
[[Category:20th-century English novelists]]
[[Category:Alumni of Magdalen College, Oxford]]
[[Category:English emigrants to Japan]]
[[Category:English essayists]]
[[Category:English male novelists]]
[[Category:English people of Indian descent]]
[[Category:English people of Indian Tamil descent]]
[[Category:English travel writers]]
[[Category:Harvard University alumni]]
[[Category:Harvard University faculty]]
[[Category:British male essayists]]
[[Category:Outlook (Indian magazine) people]]
[[Category:People educated at Eton College]]
[[Category:People educated at The Dragon School]]
[[Category:Writers from Oxford]]
[[Category:Time (magazine) people]]
[[Category:20th-century essayists]]
[[Category:20th-century English male writers]]
[[Category:English male non-fiction writers]]
[[Category:Nilkanth family]]

Pico Iyer - Revision history

>14GTR: /* External links */ Amended category