Sun After Dark: Flights Into the Foreign @ richardeward.com

Sun After Dark: Flights Into the Foreign
by Pico Iyer
from Vintage

Customer Reviews:

• Avg. Customer Rating: 3.5 / 5.0

• One of his better books
  An uneven collection of essays. I particularly enjoyed the piece on Leonard Cohen. Iyer's best essays are usually of the introspective sort.

• An uneven collection
  The titular star In Sun After Dark comes from Albert Camus, who wrote that he was born "halfway between poverty and the sun." The quote serves as a touchstone and a frame through which to view a disparate collection of essays, the common theme of which aspires to be the search for hope in even the darkest corners of the world.
  "We travel most ...when we stumble, and we stumble most when we come to a place of poverty and need...."
  In this latest volume of travel reminiscences, British-born Indian... more info

• Failed To Impress
  I've read Video Night In Kathmandu and enjoyed it thoroughly. Pico Iyer is the poet of travel literature. With an admirable way with words, Iyer is indeed a writer like no other.
  This collection is simply not as impressive. Some of the stories are so weak in content that I wonder if someone else wrote them. Even though Iyer's observations are sharp and his prose is a pleasure to read, it is obvious that some of the locations were not even thoroughly researched or explored. At the end of the day, the... more info

• Iyer really captures the experience of the traveler
  If you want a straightforward travelogue or love "package tour" travel, you probably haven't read Iyer's previous books and should skip this one. The later chapters dragged more than the rest of the book, hence, 4 stars. At its best, the book captures the essence of travel as experience--the unavoidable confrontations with self, as well as the opportunities to transcend the mundane, familiar kinds of existence. Iyer spends extended periods in Asia and South America, with stops in the US and Europe. He also... more info

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