A Beginner's Guide to Japan

Both deep and witty ... Iyer makes a perfect cultural translator * Times Literary Supplement *
Rarely in any writing on Japan is provocation so elegantly and surgically performed * Financial Times *
A must-read … Iyer at once opens up a new avenue for those familiar with the country while stoking the curiosity of would-be visitors * Elle *
Insightful and profound … Iyer can nail Japan with lyrical eloquence * Japan Times *
[A] lovely pocket compendium of oddities and insights of Japanese life ... Provocative and elegant, Iyer’s guide succeeds precisely because it doesn’t attempt to be authoritative * Publisher's Weekly *
With an elegant, understated manner, Iyer offers poignant reflections on his adopted country and its maddening contradictions and shifting parts ... Iyer's subtle observations reveal a great deal about what is beyond the surface of how some Westerners view the Japanese * Kirkus *
Pico Iyer is a writer like no other, sui generis -- Jan Morris, praise for Pico Iyer
To me [Pico Iyer] was the complete traveller – highly educated, humorous, detached, portable, positive, alert, subtle, a great noticer and listener, calm, humane and fluent in his prose. And he had been everywhere -- Paul Theroux in 'Ghost Train to the Eastern Star', praise for Pico Iyer
Iyer’s thoughtful nature leads him to peel back layer upon layer, nodding toward the infinite * New York Times Book Review *