Autumn Light
Japan's Season of Fire and Farewells
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Autumn Light
Narrated by:
Sartaj Garewal
Buy Now for £12.28
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Narrated by:
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Sartaj Garewal
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By:
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Pico Iyer
For decades now, Pico Iyer has been based for much of the year in Nara, Japan, where he and his Japanese wife, Hiroko, share a two-room apartment. But when his father-in-law dies suddenly, calling him back to Japan earlier than expected, Iyer begins to grapple with the question we all have to live with: how to hold on to the things we love, even though we know that we and they are dying.
In a country whose calendar is marked with occasions honouring the dead, this question has a special urgency and currency. Iyer leads us through the autumn following his father-in-law’s death, introducing us to the people who populate his days: his ailing mother-in-law, who often forgets that her husband has died; his absent brother-in-law, who severed ties with his family years ago but to whom Hiroko still writes letters; and the men and women in his ping-pong club, who, many years his senior, traverse their autumn years in different ways. And as the maple leaves begin to redden and the heat begins to soften, Iyer offers us a singular view of Japan, in the season that reminds us to take nothing for granted.©2023 Janklow & Nesbit Associates (New York) (P)2019 Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
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Critic reviews
What holds everything together, besides Iyer’s elegantly smooth prose style and gift for detailed observation, is a circling around the theme of autumn in Japan and this autumnal period in his life ... There's much wisdom in what he says
A tender meditation on both Japanese culture and the impermanence of life
[An] exquisite personal blend of philosophy and engagement, inner quiet and worldly life ... A vivid meditation ... It’s Iyer’s keen ear for detail and human nature that helps him populate his trademark cantabile prose ... [A] genuine and loving tale
Luminous ... An engrossing narrative, a moving meditation on loss and an evocative, lyrical portrait of Japanese society
In his guise of travel writer, Iyer has really been our most elegant poet of dislocation (praise for 'The Man Within My Head')
As a guide to far-flung places, Pico Iyer can hardly be surpassed (praise for 'Sun After Dark')
Humbling and moving ... One of a handful of magical books that I have read straight through (praise for 'The Man Within My Head')
Iyer is an admirable example of a citizen of the world – an erudite, open-minded cosmopolitan … [Autumn Light is an] excellent book (Yo Zushi)
Beautiful Thoughts About Endings
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