1. Pico Iyer is the author of numerous books on crossing cultures including Video Night in Kathmandu, The Lady and the Monk and The Global Soul.
27 Facts About Pico Iyer
1. 2.
Pico Iyer has been a contributor to Time, Harper's, The New York Review of Books, and The New York Times.
3.
Pico Iyer's father was Raghavan N Iyer, a philosopher and political theorist then enrolled in doctoral studies at the University of Oxford.
4.
Pico Iyer's mother was the religious scholar and teacher Nandini Nanak Mehta.
5.
Pico Iyer is the great-great-grandson of Indian Gujarati writer Mahipatram Nilkanth.
6.
Pico Iyer's name is a combination of the Buddha's name, Siddhartha, and that of the Italian Renaissance philosopher Pico della Mirandola.
7.
When Iyer was seven, in 1964, his family moved to California, when his father started working with the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions, a California-based think tank, and started teaching at University of California, Santa Barbara.
8.
For over a decade, Pico Iyer moved between schools and college in England and his parents' home in California.
9.
Pico Iyer was a King's Scholar at Eton College, and studied at Magdalen College, Oxford and was awarded a congratulatory double first in English literature in 1978.
10.
Pico Iyer then received an AM in literature from Harvard University in 1980.
11.
Pico Iyer taught writing and literature at Harvard before joining Time in 1982 as a writer on world affairs.
12.
Pico Iyer is a frequent speaker at literary festivals and universities around the world.
13.
Pico Iyer delivered popular TED talks in 2013,2014,2016 and 2019 and has twice been a Fellow at the World Economic Forum in Davos.
14.
Pico Iyer was the first writer-in-residence at Raffles Hotel Singapore, where he released his book, This Could be Home, which explores Singapore's heritage through its landmarks.
15.
Pico Iyer's writings build on his growing up in a combination of English, American, and Indian cultures.
16.
Pico Iyer has filed stories from Bhutan, Nepal, Ethiopia, Cuba, Argentina, Japan, and North Korea.
17.
Pico Iyer has written numerous pieces on world affairs for Time, including cover stories, and the "Woman of the Year" story on Corazon Aquino in 1986.
18.
Pico Iyer has written on literature for The New York Review of Books; on globalism for Harper's; on travel for the Financial Times; and on many other themes for The New York Times, National Geographic, The Times Literary Supplement, contributing up to a hundred articles a year to various publications.
19.
Pico Iyer has contributed liner-notes for four Leonard Cohen albums.
20.
Pico Iyer's books have appeared in 23 languages so far, including Turkish, Russian, and Indonesian.
21.
Pico Iyer has written introductions to more than 70 books, including works by R K Narayan, Somerset Maugham, Graham Greene, Michael Ondaatje, Peter Matthiessen, and Isamu Noguchi.
22.
Pico Iyer has appeared seven times in the annual Best Spiritual Writing anthology, and three times in the annual Best American Travel Writing anthology, and has served as guest editor for both.
23.
Pico Iyer has appeared in the Best American Essays anthology.
24.
Pico Iyer has been based since 1992 in Nara, Japan, where he lives with his Japanese wife, Hiroko Takeuchi, and her two children from an earlier marriage.
25.
Pico Iyer's book, The Lady and the Monk, was a memoir and a reflection of his relationship with Takeuchi.
26.
Pico Iyer has known the 14th Dalai Lama since he was in his late teens, when he accompanied his father to Dharamshala, India, in 1974.
27.
In discussions about his spirituality, Pico Iyer has mentioned not having a formal meditation practice, but practicing regular solitude, visiting a remote hermitage near Big Sur several times a year.