The acclaimed travel writer will be speaking at the upcoming Tatler Gen.T Summit happening on November 9 and 10. Here are some things to know about Pico Iyer
Known as one of the world’s greatest travel essayists, Pico Iyer has been a full-time writer since 1982. With the grace of a seasoned storyteller and the introspection of a modern-day philosopher, he has captivated audiences worldwide with his keen observations.
Iyer has published 15 books that have been translated into 23 languages including Turkish, Russian and Indonesian. Some of his more well-known titles include The Art of Stillness: Adventures in Going Nowhere, Video Night in Kathmandu, The Lady and the Monk, and The Global Soul.
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Mixing observations on the places he visits with meditations on humanity’s shared identity and changing relationships between cultures, he has served as one of the defining voices of modern cultural anthropology.
Come November, Iyer will be speaking at the Tatler Gen.T Summit, our ideas and innovation event taking place at the M+ museum in Hong Kong. Here are four facts about Pico Iyer.
A citizen of the world
Siddharth Pico Raghavan Iyer was born in 1957 in Oxford, England to Indian immigrant parents. His father was the philosopher and political theorist, Raghavan N. Iyer, and his mother, Nandini Nanak Mehta, was a religious scholar.
With such academic parentage, it’s unsurprising that his birthname was a multicultural medley of the Buddha (Siddhartha Gautama) and Italian Renaissance philosopher, Pico della Mirandola. Though initially raised in England, his upbringing and schooling shuttled him between India and the United States, leaving him to consider no one fixed place as home.
Since the 90s—following the destruction of his California home in a wildfire—he has been living in a suburb outside Osaka, Japan. He often returns to California to spend time at the New Camaldoli Hermitage, a Benedictine monastery.
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