Pico Iyer | |
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Iyer in 2012
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Born | Siddharth Pico Raghavan Iyer 11 February 1957 Oxford, England |
Occupation | Essayist, novelist |
Genre | Non-fiction/fiction |
Notable awards | Guggenheim Fellowship, 2005 |
Relatives |
Raghavan N. Iyer (father, deceased) Nandini Iyer (mother) Hiroko Takeuchi (wife) |
Website | |
PicoIyerJourneys |
Siddharth Pico Raghavan Iyer (Tamil: சித்தார்த் பைக்கோ ராகவன் ஐயர்; born 11 February 1957), known as Pico Iyer, is a British-born essayist and novelist of Indian origin, best known for his travel writing. He is the author of numerous books on crossing cultures including Video Night in Kathmandu, The Lady and the Monk and The Global Soul. An essayist for Time since 1986, he also publishes regularly in Harper's, The New York Review of Books, The New York Times, and many other publications.
Iyer was born Siddharth Pico Raghavan Iyer in Oxford, England, the son of Indian parents. His father was Raghavan N. Iyer, an Oxford philosopher and political theorist,. His mother is the religious scholar Nandini Nanak Mehta. Both of his parents grew up in India then went to England for tertiary education. His unusual name is a combination of the Buddha's name, Siddhartha, that of the Florentine neo-Platonist Pico della Mirandola and his father's name. When he was seven, in 1964, his father started working with Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions, a California-based think tank, so the family also moved to California, as his father started teaching at University of California, Santa Barbara (1965–1986). Thus for more than a decade he moved back and forth several times a year between schools and college in England and his parents' home in California. He studied at Eton, Oxford University and Harvard.