Politics Literature Arts Ideas

Pico Iyer

Pico Iyer is a Distinguished Presidential Fellow at Chapman University. His books include The Art of Stillness and The Man Within My Head.  (June 2017)

Satyajit Ray’s ‘The Hero’

For Ray, The Hero was a chance to meditate on the nature of role-playing, to reflect on the costs of make-believe, and to address perhaps the dominant theme of his middle period, the place of conscience.

February 27, 2018

Nymphets in the New Japan

Some Prefer Nettles

by Junichiro Tanizaki, translated from the Japanese by Edward G. Seidensticker

Devils in Daylight

by Junichiro Tanizaki, translated from the Japanese by J. Keith Vincent

The Maids

by Junichiro Tanizaki, translated from the Japanese by Michael P. Cronin

The Makioka Sisters

by Junichiro Tanizaki, translated from the Japanese by Edward G. Seidensticker

Naomi

by Junichiro Tanizaki, translated from the Japanese by Anthony H. Chambers

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June 8, 2017 issue

Remembering Bob Silvers

On the late editor of The New York Review

March 21, 2017

Takashi Shimura as Kanji Watanabe in Akira Kurosawa’s Ikiru, 1952

Kurosawa’s Japan Revisited

Akira Kurosawa’s Ikiru may have looked a bit more broad and didactic than I remembered. But since I moved to Japan, the film somehow still touches on a world that grows deeper within me every autumn.

December 30, 2015

Pyongyang, North Korea, September 19, 2013

Empty Cities

When Hunter Thompson wrote, “For the loser, Vegas is the meanest town on earth,” he hadn’t been to Pyongyang, the North Korean capital where even the sometime-winners are abruptly sent before the firing squads.

August 13, 2015

An Unknown America of the Mind

Darling: A Spiritual Autobiography

by Richard Rodriguez

August 14, 2014 issue

Proust & Buddhism

When writing a book once about the Dalai Lama, I was startled to realize that the very core of one of his lessons was expressed for me by none other than Marcel Proust.

December 24, 2013

Laborers in front of an apartment complex for technology workers, Hyderabad, India, March 3, 2012

Hyderabad in Five Colors

India most happily changes the lives of those who have no thought of changing India.

September 5, 2013

Japan: ‘Emotions Under the Surface’

July 11, 2013 issue

Leonard Cohen’s Holy Dove

April 25, 2013 issue

An image from photographer Trent Parke's

Cities of Sleep

The content of my dreams has long ceased to interest me; but their proportions, the way they rearrange the things I thought I cared about, the life I imagined I was leading, won’t go away.

March 21, 2013

Unknown artist: View of a Road with Wooden Houses on the Hill of Noge, Near Yokohama, circa 1900; from the book Japanese Dream, a collection of late-nineteenth-century hand-tinted photographs by Felice Beato and others. It has just been published by Hatje Cantz.

‘Masters of Doing Nothing at All’

February 7, 2013 issue

Letter

John Nathan

Japan: ‘Emotions Under the Surface’

July 11, 2013 issue

Pirate militiamen at a port in Hobyo, Somalia, August 2010

Somalia: Diving into the Wreck

Crossbones

by Nuruddin Farah

November 8, 2012 issue

Marshall McLuhan with televisions showing his image, circa 1967

The McLuhan Galaxy

Marshall McLuhan: You Know Nothing of My Work!

by Douglas Coupland

May 26, 2011 issue

Tibetan Buddhist nuns, holding their mandatory

Tibet’s Quiet Revolution

It’s been startling to witness mass demonstrations in countries across the Middle East for freedom from autocracy, while, in the Tibetan community, a die-hard champion of “people power” tries to dethrone himself and his people keep asking him to stay on. Again and again the Dalai Lama (who tends to be more radical and less romantic than most of his followers) has sought to find ways to give up power, and his community has sought to find ways to ensure he can’t.

March 19, 2011