The Half Known Life
In Search of Paradise
(Sprache: Englisch)
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NATIONAL BESTSELLER NAMED A BEST BOOK OF 2023 BY THE NEW YORK TIMES, THE NEW YORKER, NPR, TIME MAGAZINE & MORE
“Masterful . . . A book of inner journeys told through extraordinary exteriors . . . One of his very best.” —Washington Post
“Dazzling.” —Time Magazine, Best Books of 2023
From “one of the most soulful and perceptive writers of our time” (Brain Pickings): a journey through competing ideas of paradise to see how we can live more peacefully in an ever more divided and distracted world.
Paradise: that elusive place where the anxieties, struggles, and burdens of life fall away. Most of us dream of it, but each of us has very different ideas about where it is to be found. For some it can be enjoyed only after death; for others, it’s in our midst—or just across the ocean—if only we can find eyes to see it.
Traveling from Iran to North Korea, from the Dalai Lama’s Himalayas to the ghostly temples of Japan, Pico Iyer brings together a lifetime of explorations to upend our ideas of utopia and ask how we might find peace in the midst of difficulty and suffering. Does religion lead us back to Eden or only into constant contention? Why do so many seeming paradises turn into warzones? And does paradise exist only in the afterworld – or can it be found in the here and now?
For almost fifty years Iyer has been roaming the world, mixing a global soul’s delight in observing cultures with a pilgrim’s readiness to be transformed. In this culminating work, he brings together the outer world and the inner to offer us a surprising, original, often beautiful exploration of how we might come upon paradise in the midst of our very real lives.
Lese-Probe zu „The Half Known Life “
The Walled GardenFour hours in Iran, and already I was having to rethink almost everything. The local guide who'd greeted me as I stumbled out of Customs at three in the morning, elegant in black slacks and jacket, had begun to speak about his days at a boarding school near London in the 1970s. We'd pulled up at a luxury hotel, and I'd heard the strains of "Yesterday" being plaintively piped through the lobby. In one corner of the palatial space, a small sign in English pointed to a tiny room: "Mosque." Very close to it, a Swarovski shop was dripping in crystals and an Yves Rocher boutique promised this season's offerings from Paris.
Now, as I strolled back from an early morning walk in the late summer sunlight, past a series of blue-glass towers lining the spotless, near-empty street, I saw Ali, my official Virgil, striding towards me with a smile. The lobby behind him was full, when we re-entered, of women tapping away on smartphones with rose-colored fingernails, strands of silky hair slipping out from under many a hijab.
"Shall we make our first stop this morning" - Ali's English would not have sounded out of place in Windsor Castle - "Tus?"
"Actually, I was hoping we could go to the Imam Reza Shrine." Over eighteen months of correspondence with the Foreign Ministry in Tehran, I'd taken pains to ensure my trip would begin in the holy city. I was less interested in a shadowy government that seemed to shift policies with every passing season than in a culture that had dazzled me from afar since boyhood with its jeweled verses and the flat visions of paradise magicked into being on its carpets. The central mosque in Mashhad, with its fourteen minarets, four seminaries, seven interlocking marble courtyards and cemetery, was said to be the largest such compound on the planet.
"There are," said Ali, with what sounded like sculpted vagueness, "a few complications today. Perhaps we should drive out into the country?"
Captive for now, I followed my
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companion out to a car, where a burly older man, sporting a baseball cap - "Australia" - above his white shirt and chinos, was waiting to guide us through wide, tree-lined streets under large freeway signs in English. We passed a commanding statue, and Ali reminded me that Omar Khayyam, cradling an astronomical instrument above the modern boulevard, had invented a calendar more accurate than the Gregorian. Khayyam might be famous in England for his romantic quatrains - "Take care to create your own paradise, here and now on earth" - but in Iran he was best known for his transformative calculations.
We continued along quiet country roads that my guide could have likened to Oxfordshire, though these ones were lined with orchards of peaches and cherries. Ali spun beautifully brocaded sentences about double meanings and starlit nights, about how the same Farsi word was used for both "garden" and "paradise." All Iran was a garden in the poetry of its local hero Ferdowsi, he explained; the same man had laid down both the outlines of a legal system and a code of courtly love. No, of course, our hotel wasn't quite the London Hilton on Park Lane - he stayed there often while taking Iranians on tours of Britain - but he hoped it might prove comfortable enough.
We were traveling out to the small town of Tus, Ali went on, because it was there that Ferdowsi was buried. Jalaludin Rumi might be famous across the West; his verses about giving himself up to the "Beloved" and flinging away holy books lent themselves perfectly to secular distortion. But it was Ferdowsi who had, in the eleventh century, given the entire culture an identity and a voice. His sixty-thousand-couplet epic, the Shahnameh, which those in the West called The Book of Kings, had hymned a new Farsi into being, over the thirty years it took to complete, much as Shakespeare had sent more than fifteen hundred words and phrases into modern English.
We drew up at
We continued along quiet country roads that my guide could have likened to Oxfordshire, though these ones were lined with orchards of peaches and cherries. Ali spun beautifully brocaded sentences about double meanings and starlit nights, about how the same Farsi word was used for both "garden" and "paradise." All Iran was a garden in the poetry of its local hero Ferdowsi, he explained; the same man had laid down both the outlines of a legal system and a code of courtly love. No, of course, our hotel wasn't quite the London Hilton on Park Lane - he stayed there often while taking Iranians on tours of Britain - but he hoped it might prove comfortable enough.
We were traveling out to the small town of Tus, Ali went on, because it was there that Ferdowsi was buried. Jalaludin Rumi might be famous across the West; his verses about giving himself up to the "Beloved" and flinging away holy books lent themselves perfectly to secular distortion. But it was Ferdowsi who had, in the eleventh century, given the entire culture an identity and a voice. His sixty-thousand-couplet epic, the Shahnameh, which those in the West called The Book of Kings, had hymned a new Farsi into being, over the thirty years it took to complete, much as Shakespeare had sent more than fifteen hundred words and phrases into modern English.
We drew up at
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Autoren-Porträt von Pico Iyer
Pico Iyer is the acclaimed and bestselling author of more than a dozen books, translated into twenty-three languages. His journalism has appeared in Time, The New York Times, The New York Review of Books, the Financial Times, and more than 250 other periodicals worldwide. His TED talks have been viewed over eleven million times. He divides his time between Japan and a Benedictine hermitage in California.Bibliographische Angaben
- Autor: Pico Iyer
- 2023, Internationale Ausgabe, 240 Seiten, Maße: 14,3 x 20,9 cm, Kartoniert (TB), Englisch
- Verlag: Riverhead Books
- ISBN-10: 0593543963
- ISBN-13: 9780593543962
- Erscheinungsdatum: 04.01.2023
Sprache:
Englisch
Pressezitat
Praise for The Half Known Life:Pico Iyer has done the impossible with this book. . . This is a singular offering of magnetic story, deep thinking, truth telling, and spiritual refreshment for our tumultuous young century. New York Times bestselling author Krista Tippett
In elegant and ecstatic prose, Pico Iyer uncovers our wonderful capacity for hope, wearing his erudition so lightly. I was revitalized by this book. New York Times bestselling author Katherine May
To step into The Half Known Life feels both a privilege and a necessity. . . Iyer is more than a guide or a compatriot in an unfamiliar land: in the inward journey to lucidity he is a companion of our own searching minds. PEN Award winner Yiyun Li
In this brilliantly told Buddhist parable, Pico Iyer takes the reader from London to Santa Barbara, Jerusalem to Sri Lanka, Japan's Bridge of Heaven to Varanasi, exploring the insatiable human longing for Paradise while acutely observing with irony, wit, and empathy the paradoxes inherent in actual experience. New York Times bestselling author Dr. Elaine Pagels
Nothing less than a guided tour of the human soul. Filled with hope, wisdom, and extraordinary tenderness, this is a book not only for the ages, but for our very specific, very troubled age. A masterpiece. New York Times bestselling author Elizabeth Gilbert
This book combines the wisdom of a lifelong traveler with the insights of a dazzling range of spiritual traditions, sparking our enthusiasm for more adventures: both around the world and inside the soul. Pulitzer Prize winner Benjamin Moser
One of his very best A work of spiritual evolution built around vivid, discernible images of real places by a master of description A masterful merging of Iyer s past and current concerns, a book of inner journeys told through extraordinary
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exteriors. Washington Post
Reading Mr. Iyer s book in the depth of winter, in a troubled world, it s heartening to think that paradise or at least a glimpse of it might be available from where we sit. Wall Street Journal
From one of the most perceptive writers of our times, this one brings forth a lifetime of explorations to upend our ideas of utopia and ask how we might find peace in the midst of difficulty and suffering. Could there be anything better to pick at the start of the year? Harper s Bazaar
Mesmerizing In Iyer's riveting anecdotes, a sudden intimacy with death brings one closer to glimpses of paradise. NPR
In Iyer s hands, the search for paradise, the way out of the ego, doubles as an internal journey This elliptical odyssey, graced with occasional notes of light, finds itself by dwelling in the shadows His book has the soft ring of a classic Buddhist meditation strategy: In order to understand the emptiness of the ego, one must first find the self as it appears. New York Times Book Review
Everywhere Pico Iyer travels his keen vision allows him to see both ravishing beauty and profound flaws His wide-ranging quest is a useful reminder that the journey often is more absorbing than any destination Pico Iyer elegantly recounts some of his exotic travels and reflects on the search for an elusive land of bliss. Shelf Awareness
Reading Mr. Iyer s book in the depth of winter, in a troubled world, it s heartening to think that paradise or at least a glimpse of it might be available from where we sit. Wall Street Journal
From one of the most perceptive writers of our times, this one brings forth a lifetime of explorations to upend our ideas of utopia and ask how we might find peace in the midst of difficulty and suffering. Could there be anything better to pick at the start of the year? Harper s Bazaar
Mesmerizing In Iyer's riveting anecdotes, a sudden intimacy with death brings one closer to glimpses of paradise. NPR
In Iyer s hands, the search for paradise, the way out of the ego, doubles as an internal journey This elliptical odyssey, graced with occasional notes of light, finds itself by dwelling in the shadows His book has the soft ring of a classic Buddhist meditation strategy: In order to understand the emptiness of the ego, one must first find the self as it appears. New York Times Book Review
Everywhere Pico Iyer travels his keen vision allows him to see both ravishing beauty and profound flaws His wide-ranging quest is a useful reminder that the journey often is more absorbing than any destination Pico Iyer elegantly recounts some of his exotic travels and reflects on the search for an elusive land of bliss. Shelf Awareness
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