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The Half Known Life: In Search of Paradise
by Pico Iyer
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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?…
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"With soulful curiosity channeled in his ever-lyrical prose, Pico Iyer chronicles a lifetime of pilgrimages to some of Earth’s greatest shrines to that longing in The Half Known Life: In Search of Paradise."
"Voyaging from shadowy mosques and gardens of Iran (where the same Farsi word is used for both “garden” and “paradise”) to the stark skyline of North Korea; from the deceptively peaceful lakes of Kashmir to the unyielding terrains of Ladakh and the tense sunlit lawns of Sri Lanka; from the wrathful Old Testament landscape of Broome, Australia, to the fog-shrouded embankments of Varanasi; from the clamorous streets of Jerusalem to the hushed temples of Koyasan, Japan, Pico Iyer captures the otherworldly beauty of these places while acknowledging the paradox of utopia. Why do so many paradises rupture in suffering and chaos? Is the serpent a natural habitant of paradise? In the process, he also questions our idea of knowledge by embracing the half-known life, “where so many of our possibilities lie.”"