THE HALF KNOWN LIFE

An acclaimed travel writer sets out on a journey to an elusive destination: paradise.

Iyer has written many beloved books on his expeditions around the world, and he has a gift for capturing the texture and cadence of a place and its people. His latest, which he sees as something of a capstone to his life’s work, is more than a travel memoir. He explores the idea of paradise held in different cultures and religions, making the text a spiritual journey rather than an itinerary, a pilgrimage to a semi-imagined place “where so many of our possibilities lie.” The author begins in Iran, a country caught between the ambitions of its theocratic rulers to return to an earlier time and the desires of its people to build a faith and society suitable for the 21st century. Not for the only time in this book, Iyer finds that he has to discard his preconceptions if he is to make sense of the reality he finds. The search for paradise often intersects with real-world conflict, and the author was stunned by the ethnic violence that has torn apart the beautiful island of Sri Lanka. The irony is that the center of the island is an oasis of Buddhist calm, untouched by the ocean of warfare. In Jerusalem, Iyer discovered “a holy turbulence” of competing beliefs, but somehow people have learned to live with the chaos. Perhaps, then, heaven can only be found after death? His visit to Japanese shrines points that way, but Iyer finds the idea rather cold. He does not reach a definitive conclusion, but he begins to accept that the search for peace leads to a place within. “I decided that I would no longer seek out holy places in [a] city of temples,” he writes near the end. “I would just let life come to me in all its happy confusion and find the holiness in that.” Amen.

With keen observation and beautiful language, Iyer shows us the essential truths of places, people, and ideas.