Book Review: The Half Known Life: In Search of Paradise by Pico Iyer
This book is well-written and takes us to fascinating places, but it is suffused with irony. Iyer tours locations that for one reason or another have been considered forms of paradise, but most of them are fraught with violence, and some are among the most dangerous locales in the world. He writes: “A true paradise has meaning only after one has outgrown all notions of perfection and taken the measure of the fallen world.” Additionally, though he writes of a search for paradise, he makes it clear that he is approaching the subject from a secular viewpoint. He is not a religious person, and though his prose is beautifully wrought, he maintains a distance, a sort of remoteness from his material, as if he is reporting on situations that do not touch him personally. This is not necessarily a drawback, but it is clear that another writer, one who is searching for meaning and fulfillment, might approach the task with much more empathy and emotion. Iyer also indulges in privileged traveling, which I find hard to relate to – that is, a method of traveling that only the wealthy can afford: flying in a carefree manner from one spot to another halfway around the world, staying in luxury hotels, and hiring cars, drivers, and guides. Although I have traveled extensively too, I have always had to stick to budget transport and find my own way around as best I can.
The tour of holy places begins in Iran, where Iyer visits mosques and palaces and other historic and contemporary sites. Iran’s claim to fame as a repository of paradise, according to Iyer, is its spiritual poetry from many centuries ago. As he travels around modern-day Iran, it is clear that foreigners are restricted to certain areas, he has clearly defined boundaries, and he is not altogether safe. From Iran, Iyer takes us to, of all places, Pyongyang, North Korea. He justifies this stop because to the North Korean leadership the country is a “people’s paradise” – but his stay there is fraught with paranoia and tension. Paradise? No thanks.
Onward to Belfast, Ireland: another zone of incessant conflict. He alludes to a “History of Terror” tour, which takes participants “to the site of Bloody Friday – almost two dozen bombs exploding in barely an hour – and the homes of terrorists.” He later writes of the musician Van Morrison, a native of Belfast, who transformed a squalid world through his music. “He’d made of the unpromising landscape a world as magically illuminated as Avalon.” Next, he takes us to another global hotspot: Kashmir. He writes of the British attempting to create a sort of paradise by building houseboats on the lake; however, since partition this natural paradise has been the site of almost constant conflict – surrounded by opposing forces and barbed wire.
When Iyer moves on to a remote corner of the Australian outback, a coastal town called Broome, it seems like a pleasant interlude – until we read of tumultuous weather and the ongoing ill-treatment of the aboriginal population. From the Australian wastelands he cuts to Jerusalem, the site of many competing faiths and sects and of continual discord and violence. In all of these situations, he observes and reports but has no answers – he does not even attempt any. He merely describes – with eloquence – what he sees. Then there is Ladakh, a place of ongoing conflict between India, Pakistan, and China, and then Sri Lanka, where the decades-long battle is between Tamils and Singhalese. Both Ladakh and Sri Lanka are natural paradises that humankind has ripped apart with violence.
The final two places Iyer visits are not war zones, however. One is holy Mount Koyasan near Osaka, the site of numerous temples, and the other is Varanasi on the Ganges River in India. Of Koyasan he writes that “joy, for a monk, is never the same as pleasure, because it has nothing to do with changing circumstance.” This seems to be one of the themes of his book: that paradise continues to exist despite human conflicts around it.
At first I found Iyer’s choices of destinations to be jarring in a book that is supposed to be about his pilgrimage from one paradisiacal location to another. However, in reality, in our present era the entire world is full of conflict, and we have to look beyond the discord and mayhem for natural beauties and spiritual truths. This book, poetically written, brings home that point. Recommended.
