A collection of travel writing from the author of "Video Night in Kathmandu".

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.

Early 20th century French Indochina: a place where the cultures, passions and blood of East and West mixed freely. In 1925, American author Harry Hervey saw white men "sowing the legend of Civilization in soil too fecund to resist any new growth," inspiring his most vivid novel. In a tale drunk with sensuous beauty, irony and dark intensity, we experience the life of one young girl-a congai-named Thi-Linh. Born of an Annamite mother and French father, Thi-Linh-a creature of fragile beauty and savage instinct-embodies the dreams, ambitions and future of Indochina, where two disparate races...

Using his own multicultural upbringing as a point of departure, Pico Iyer sets out on a journey - both physical and psychological - towards a definition of home in this world gone mobile. He travels to America, Hong Kong, Toronto, Atlanta, England, and Japan, where he finally finds a home.

Winner of the Edward Stanford Travel Memoir of the Year 2020 How does a sushi bar explain a Japanese poem? Why do Japanese couples plan matching outfits for their honeymoon? Why are so many things in Japan the opposite of what we expect? After thirty-two years in Japan, Pico Iyer knows the country as few others can. In A Beginner's Guide to Japan, he dashes from baseball games to love-hotels and from shopping malls to zen temple gardens to find fresh ways of illuminating his adopted home. Playful and surreptitiously profound, this is a guidebook to a Japan few have ever seen...