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Video Night in Kathmandu: And Other Reports from the Not-So-Far-East

Pico Iyer (1998)

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THE A5 BOOK REVIEW

The book that established Pico Iyer as a renowned travel writer is in our opinion his best. Video Night in Kathmandu is a collection of essays describing his travels though Asia in the mid-1980s.  In each chapter, he writes about a particular experience or theme for each of the places he visited.  For China, it is westernization, and for Bali, the clash of tourism and paradise.  Other stories cover Nepal’s hippie culture, India’s Bollywood, Japan’s baseball, Thailand’s seedy side, and so on.  This was a particularly interesting time to be in Asia, especially to be in Hong Kong while still under British rule and in China post-Mao.  Iyer shares some interesting observations on how the East and the West are colliding, not only because of their differences but because of how each is drawn to each other.  Iyer is no doubt an excellent writer, sometimes a little funny but more often intriguing and provocative.  Video Night in Kathmandu is highly recommended and even today, a great window into the Far East.
Click here to see reviews and prices for this book on Amazon.

OTHER A5 RECOMMENDED TRAVEL BOOKS - PICO IYER

photo of Pico Iyer
Pico Iyer is a prominent travel writer, best known for his books on crossing cultures and trips to some of the world's least explored places.  He has published a number of non-fiction travel books and a couple novels, and he is a frequent contributor to Time, Harper’s, the New York Times, and many other publications.  Click here to learn more about Pico Iyer and his work.

book cover for The Global Soul
book cover of Falling Off the Map

GREAT QUOTES FROM VIDEO NIGHT IN KATHMANDU

“If the great horror of traveling is that the foreign can come to see drearily familiar, the happy surprise of traveling is that the familiar can come to see wonderously exotic.”

"And Tibetan Buddhism was the first religion I had ever seen more impressive in its practice than its preaching.  Back home, I had always harbored suspicions about the protestations of Tibetans or Tibetan-minded friends.  Nor had I ever been able to follow the abstruse cerebrations of their doctrine.  Yet the Tibetans I met - gentle yet tough, devout but fun-loving, masters of magic and machinery - thoroughly disarmed me.  And the devotion I saw everywhere in their country moved me beyond words.  Whenever I was alone in the Tibetan sunlight and silence, I felt that these were days of heaven and I would never know such purity again."

INTERESTING LINKS:

  • Read the New York Times 1998 review ​​of Video Night in Kathmandhu.
  • The A5 Travel Books' recommendation for the best travel guide for Nepal is Lonely Planet, the true expert on this amazing area of the world.  
  • This book is one of our favorites in travel literature.  Click here to see the full list of our top recommendations.

LEAVE YOUR OWN REVIEW


MAP OF KATHMANDU


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