The Lady and the Monk

Iyer’s prose is beautiful, and he’s best known for his travel writing. In this book, he stays put, living in Japan and immersing himself in Zen and the pleasures of traditional life in Kyoto. He also meets his wife, and the combination of cultural study and personal memoir makes for an absolutely lovely read. 

Fêted essayist and travel scribe Pico Iyer is smitten in this account of his first year living in Japan. He comes to study the mysteries of Zen at a monastery in Kyoto, but the lofty quest doesn’t last long. Everything changes for the young narrator when he meets and falls in love with the lady of the book’s title who would later become his wife. Alongside telling the tale of this budding romance, Iyer delicately shares his wide-eyed discovery of Japan, from the quirky to the sublime, making the book a love letter of sorts to the country itself. Even… show more.

Pico Iyer is a noted travel writer with a gift for capturing the spirit of place. In this fictionalised version of time spent in the city, he captures many of its salient aspects. The seasonal round, the Zen tradition, the sense of transience, the allure of Japanese arts. I found myself nodding in recognition of the many insights that pepper his prose. The only book that compares with it is Kawabata’s Koto (The Old Capital), less substantial and wreathed in nostalgia.