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