Falling Off the Map

Showing the same sympathy and eye for the absurd that made VIDEO NIGHT IN KATHMANDU such a delight, Pico Iyer now turns to places that most of us would make a point of avoiding. Places like Paraguay, Iceland, North Korea, Cuba, Vietnam and Bhutan. "Lonely places," Iyer calls them, "the places that don't fit in," places that in their psychic or geographic or political isolation become even stranger and more remote as time goes on, more possessed by claustrophobia and loony comedy. "Immensely resonant: a funny, stimulating, eminently humane work." (Kirkus Reviews)