The Global Soul

From the acclaimed author of Video Night in Kathmandu comes this intriguing new book that deciphers the personal impact of globalization and the rising tide of worldwide displacement. Beginning in Los Angeles International Airport, where town life - shops, services, sociability - is available without a town, Pico Iyer takes us on a tour of the transnational village our world has become. From Hong Kong, where people actually live in self-contained hotels, to Atlanta's Olympic Village, which seems to interpret universalism in a corporate more than a truly human way, to Japan, where in the midst of alien surfaces his apartment building is called "The Memphis", Iyer ponders what the word "home" can possibly mean in a world whose face is blurred by its cultural fusion and its alarmingly rapid rate of change.