Open Road

"Pico Iyer's exceptionally intimate portrait of the Dalai lama takes us beyond global celebrity image and into a true private audience with a leader of tremendous complexity." - Elizabeth Gilbert, author of international bestseller, 'Eat, Pray, Love'

Pico Iyer has known the Dalai lama for the last three decades. In this insightful, impassioned book he captures the paradoxes of the Dalai lama's position: though he was born in one of the most remote, least developed places on earth, he has become a champion of globalism and technology - a religious leader who warns against being needlessly distracted by religion, an incarnation of a Tibetan God who stresses his everyday humanity. On the fiftieth anniversary of the Dalai Lama's flight to India, The Open Road illuminates the hidden life, the transforming ideas and the daily challenges of this global icon - it is the first serious examination, for Buddhists and non-Buddhists alike, of the Fourteenth Dalai Lama's work and ideas.

"An unedited triumph...subtle and moving" - Bill McKibben, author of Deep Economy

"Elegant and intensely personal...Marvelous" - Washington Posy

"(Iyer has) an access and insight into the Dalai lama that lifts his writing above the cliches that normally suround him.. The Open Road is not a biography, but it probably reveals more about its subject than any formal study." - Economist

'A thoughtful and beautifully written portrait. Fascinating." - Daily Telegraph