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 Compare his essays with Cahill and O'Rourke Jun 21, 2008
Pico Iyer has a poetic style, Tim Cahill is compassionate, and P.J. O'Rourke is down and dirty. But all three have written excellent travel essays, sometimes on the same places. My recommendation is to read "Falling Off the Map", and Iyer's earlier book, "Video Night in Kathmandu", and then read "Holidays in Hell" by O'Rourke and any book by Cahill for other takes on the same turf. Overall, you'll get a very well-rounded picture of some lands that you might never want to visit, but which are fascinating in their own, dysfunctional, way.
3 of 3 found the following review helpful:
 Witty and Insightful ... Aug 09, 2005
Pico's short book is full of sharp and witty humor conjugated with intelligent insightful observations. He combines day-to-day anecdotes, personal interactions and socio-political prose with amazing dexterity. The background information provided for each lonely country visited by Pico is pretty amazing.
I have traveled to some of these lonely places and can almost relive my travel experiences after reading his book (though he traveled almost a decade before I did). With every passing chapter, I could observe a progressive improvement in Pico's writing style. Essays from Argentina, Paraguay and Bhutan are very interesting. He comes into his own with the concluding essay on Australia.
3 of 4 found the following review helpful:
 Great ideas for an intrepid traveller. May 12, 2005
Pico Iyer has a keen eye and great facility with words, and therefore his books always make for great reading. "Falling off the map," is a book that describes at lenght about some lonely places in the world. He has an uncanny knack of painting a vivid portrait that instally transports you to these places.
Iyer defines lonley places as those places that are not the topic of conversation at any international dinner tables. These places are "shy,defensive,curious places: places that do not know how they are supposed to behave." And Iyer convices us in that in this ever-shrinking world such placs still exist: Cuba, Iceland, Bhutan, Vietnam and others.
The minute I finished reading the book, I wanted to go these lonely and interesting places that Iyer talks about in this book. But, that was just a passing thought, and then harsh reality intruded and I started to fret about creature comforts, food, transportion etc.Visiting these places is not for the faint-hearted with weak stomachs.
If you can brave these places like Iyer did, you are a lucky person, but if you are like the masses that like to sit in the comfort of a lazybody of the living room and indulge in arm-chair travelling then this is a must-read book. That is precisely what I did. I derived great vicarious pleasure by reading this book.
But, alas Iyer made his expedition to these lonely places over a decade ago, and since then things have changed in some of these lonely places, and they are fast becoming the new destination for regular travellers. There is some hope for me in this changing travelling trend ...perhaps, I can get to visit these places in my lifetime.
4 of 4 found the following review helpful:
A Non-Guide to Non-Tourist Attractions May 07, 2005
I have to admit I'm a sucker for all travel narratives. I have a serious travel jones myself, and since I'm not in a position to jet all over the world right now, I have to armchair travel. Pico Iyer was recommended highly to me by a fellow armchair traveler so I set about this book with some high expectations.
The downside of this book is that he's writing about a number of places I'm likely not to visit-North Korea, Cuba, Paraguay-but after a few chapters my disappointment at reading about "lonely places" that will remain unvisited by me gradually fell away as Iyer's style became more comfortable for me.
He refers to classic travel writers frequently, and if you haven't read these authors, some of the references lose their impact, but Iyer's observations are so detailed, so full of atmosphere, that you don't necessarily get a picture of the country he's visiting, but a total feeling that's larger than the individual portraits he presents. I get the feeling he genuinely loves the people and the places he's visited and doesn't see them as part of some journalistic assignment he has to get through.
6 of 6 found the following review helpful:
home is where everything is the same and yet different May 13, 2002
Pico Iyer's prose caught my eye in his Time Magazine columns where he did a good job showing us how recognizable the exotic has become. This collection, his first in book form, again reiterates that the most difficult aspect of long distance travel is not any longer how to get there, how to dodge danger or how to find your way back but how to avoid to bump into the same features you left 10,000 miles and 6 timezones earlier. Showing through many examples, sometimes hilarious and sometimes profoundly sad how globalisation regurgitates the same marketing ideas dressed in different flags it really makes its point that the era of the curious gentleman(woman) traveler looking for exotic shores has been overtaken by the vastly less romantic quest to escape the onslaught of canned icons in any neck of the woods.
The book also does a nice job of illuminating the paradoxical quest of the overfed and understimulated prestigious first world traveler trying to find hidden corners where there is still some sort of exploration possible and where not all laws of our structured civilization apply only to be greeted by the not so happy natives who are dying to know how to join the West or in the least purchase its most potent logos.
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