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NATIONAL BESTSELLER
NAMED A BEST BOOK OF 2023 BY THE NEW YORK TIMES THE NEW YORKER NPR TIME MAGAZINE amp MORE

From one of the most soulful and perceptive writers of our time BrainPickings a journey through competing ideas of paradise to see how we can live more peacefully in an ever more divided and distracted world

Paradise that elusive place where the anxieties struggles and burdens of life fall away Most of us dream of it but each of us has very different ideas about where it is to be found For some it can be enjoyed only after death for others its in our midstor just across the oceanif only we can find eyes to see it

Traveling from Iran to North Korea from the Dalai Lamas Himalayas to the ghostly temples of Japan Pico Iyer brings together a lifetime of explorations to upend our ideas of utopia and ask how we might find peace in the midst of difficulty and suffering Does religion lead us back to Eden or only into constant contention Why do so many seeming paradises turn into warzones And does paradise exist only in the afterworld or can it be found in the here and now

For almost fifty years Iyer has been roaming the world mixing a global souls delight in observing cultures with a pilgrims readiness to be transformed In this culminating work he brings together the outer world and the inner to offer us a surprising original often beautiful exploration of how we might come upon paradise in the midst of our very real lives