The Global Soul: Jet Lag, Shopping Malls and the Search for Home

In the global village that our world has become, travel and technology fuel each other and us. ‘Everywhere is made up of everywhere else,’ motion is our most constant state of being, our very souls have been put into circulation. Yet, as Pico Iyer points out in his fresh, acutely observant, and witty new book, even a global person must have a home. Using his own multicultural upbringing (Indian, American, British) as a point of departure, Iyer sets out on a journey – both physical and psychological – toward a definition of home in this world gone mobile. He travels to Los Angeles International Airport, where town life (shops, services, sociability) is available without a town; to Hong Kong, where hotels are self-contained communities, to Toronto, made cosmopolitan by its émigré population, to Atlanta, where the Olympic Village unintentionally commemorates the mass-produced universalism that shapes the games; to England, where the effects of empire-as-global-village are still being sorted out; and to Japan, where Iyer unexpectedly, and finally, finds a home for himself.