February 4, 2003
Contact: George Yatchisin
(805) 893-3494
e-mail: yatchisin-g@ sa.ucsb.edu
Acclaimed writer Pico Iyer delivers the incisive presentation Islam and California: A Cultural Romance at Victoria Hall
Summary Facts:
- Pico Iyer
- Islam and California: A Cultural Romance
- Author of the recently published novel Abandon
- Acclaimed for his previous works such as The Global Soul, Video Night in Kathmandu and The Lady and the Monk
- Monday, March 10
- 8 pm / Victoria Hall, 33 W. Victoria St., Santa Barbara
- General public: $8, UCSB students: $6
- Tickets/Information: UCSB Arts & Lectures at 893-3535
Pico Iyer, one of the keenest observers of our multicultural world, will deliver the presentation Islam and California: A Cultural Romance on Monday, March 10 at 8 pm in Victoria Hall, 33 W. Victoria St., Santa Barbara. This presentation is adapted from his new novel Abandon (2003, Knopf), a dazzling work about a young scholar at the University of California, Santa Barbara attempting to finish his dissertation on the Sufi mystical poet Jelaluddin Rumi (1207-1273). Iyer, a part-time Santa Barbara resident, is the author of seven books including Global Soul: Jet Lag, Shopping Malls and the Search for Home, Video Night in Kathmandu and The Lady and the Monk. Salon has insisted “with extraordinary empathy and insight, Iyer shows how cultures collide...how a dance of dreams and desires and preconceptions ensues every time a visitor and a local meet.” In 1995 the Utne Reader named Pico Iyer one of the 100 “writers who could change your life.”
Pico Iyer describes himself as a “global village on two legs.” He was born in England to Indian parents, migrated to California as a boy, studied at Eton and Oxford, and currently splits his time between Japan and Santa Barbara. He also ventures throughout the world, and has made travel writing a philosophical adventure. The essays in Global Soul, for instance, largely take place in Los Angeles International Airport, and struggle with ideas of identity, nations, permanence and home. Iyer has written “travel is the best way we have of rescuing the humanity of places and saving them from abstraction and ideology.”
Publisher’s Weekly announced Abandon with the following blurb: “Framed by the conflict between Islamic and secular Western values, this novel is part mystery, part spiritual coming-of-age tale and part romance....Iyer’s intellectual detective story evolves into a deeper probing of love, spirituality and the clash of two world views. Without being forced or didactic, Iyer explores American ideas and misconceptions about Islamic faith, while exposing the political corruption that continues to plague many Muslim countries....Perhaps its greatest achievement is the evolution of the deep, passionate love between John and Camilla [its protagonists], which Iyer renders with grace and psychological acuity.”
Pico Iyer has been a writer for Time since 1982, and his articles appear often in Harper’s, The New York Times, Sports Illustrated, Condé Nast Traveler, and other publications on both sides of the Atlantic and Pacific. His other books include Cuba and the Night, Falling Off the Map and Tropical Classical.
Courtesy of the UCSB Bookstore, books by Pico Iyer will be available for purchase and signing at the event. This event is presented by UCSB Arts & Lectures and sponsored by KEYT 1250 AM.
Tickets for this presentation by Pico Iyer are $8 for the general public and $6 for UCSB students and are on sale now at the A&L Ticket Office.
For tickets or more information,
call UCSB Arts & Lectures at (805) 893-3535.
Editor: For photos, please call
George Yatchisin at (805) 893-3494.