Video Night in Kathmandu: And Other Reports from the Not-So-Far-EastPico Iyer (1998) |
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THE A5 BOOK REVIEWThe 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.
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OTHER A5 RECOMMENDED TRAVEL BOOKS - 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.
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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:
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