Abandon by Pico Iyer

What is the book about?

John Macmillan is a scholar of Sufi poetry in search of an original manuscript that nobody else has translated. Camilla Jensen is a whimsical woman, perpetually lost and in disarray, who longs for the stability that John seems to represent. Abandon is about the intertwining of the quests of these two seekers.

Who is it by?

Pico Iyer is an essayist and a well known travel writer of several books like Video Night in Kathmandu, The Lady and the Monk and Falling off the Map. Abandon is his first novel.

Why should I read it?

Abandon is a cryptically layered story about quests. On the surface, it is about the protagonists’ individual struggles to attain what seem to be elusive goals. At a deeper level, the book mirrors the Sufi concept of the search for the beloved and about the duality of the word ‘abandon’ itself.

An edited version of the article was published in Culturama's November 2012 Issue.