Falling Off the Map

The author of Video Night in Kathmandu ups the ante on himself in this sublimely evocative and acerbically funny tour through the world's loneliest and most eccentric places. From Iceland to Bhutan to Argentina, Iyer remains both uncannily observant and hilarious.Iyer experiences and depicts these lonely places with the same wit, vitality and insight that distinguish his first two books— and the result is a memorable gallery of countries poignantly isolated in spirit and time'— San Francisco. Examiner what does the elegant nostalgia of Argentina have in common with the raffish nonchalance of Australia? And what do both these countries have in common with North Korea? They are all `lonely places' cut off from the rest of the world by geography, ideology or sheer weirdness. And they have all attracted the attention of Pico Iyer. Whether he is documenting the cruising rites of Icelandic teenagers, being interrogated by tipsy Cuban police or summarizing the plot of Bhutan's first feature film (`a $6500 spectacular about a star-crossed couple: she dies, he throws himself on the funeral pyre, and both live happily ever after as an ox and a cow'), Iyer is always uncannily observant and acerbically funny.