“An inspiring and optimistic book about the future of the new global culture.”—Chicago Tribune

The Global Soul

Jet Lag, Shopping Malls, and the Search for Home

From the acclaimed author of Video Nights in Kathmandu comes this intriguing new book that deciphers the cultural ramifications of globalization and the rising tide of worldwide displacement.

Beginning in Los Angeles International Airport, where town life—shops, services, sociability—is available without a town, Pico Iyer takes us on a tour of the transnational village our world has become. From Hong Kong, where people actually live in self-contained hotels, to Atlanta’s Olympic Village, which seems to inadvertently commemorate a sort of corporate universalism, to Japan, where in the midst of alien surfaces his apartment building is called “The Memphis,” Iyer ponders what the word “home” can possibly mean in a world whose face is blurred by its cultural fusion and its alarmingly rapid rate of change.

“Wise and subtle, Iyer wears his erudition lightly and weaves personal anecdote into enduring reportage.”The Independent (U.K.)

“Pico Iyer is the poet laureate of wanderlust. His perennial subject is the strange confluences and poignant idiosyncrasies born of our world’s dissolving borders, and he explores it with a rich mix of astonishing erudition and wide-eyed wonder.”Literary Quarterly

“Powerful and essential reading for anyone trying to understand the modern world.”Minneapolis Star Tribune