Sun After Dark (20 page)
“I am not seeking an escape from dread,” wrote Czeslaw Milosz, after fleeing the shadows of his native Poland for the open spaces of California, “but rather, proof that dread and reverence can exist within us simultaneously.” On the streets, the signs said simply, unanswerably, TOMORROW BELONGS TO HAITI.
Pico Iyer
SUN AFTER DARK
Pico Iyer is the author of several books about cultures converging, including
Video Night in Kathmandu, The
Lady and the Monk, The Global Soul,
and, most recently,
Abandon
. His articles appear often in such magazines as
Harper’s, Time,
and the
New York
Review of Books
. He lives in suburban Japan.
ALSO BY PICO IYER
Abandon
The Global Soul
Tropical Classical
Cuba and the Night
Falling Off the Map
The Lady and the Monk
Video Night in Kathmandu
FIRST VINTAGE DEPARTURES EDITION, APRIL 2005
Copyright © 2004 by Pico Iyer
Vintage is a registered trademark and Vintage Departures and colophon are trademarks of Random House, Inc.
Portions of this work originally appeared, often in very different form, in the following:
The American Scholar
,
Buzz
,
Condé Nast Traveler
,
Harper’s
, the
New York Review of Books
,
The New York Times Book Review
, and
Time
.
Excerpts from
When We Were Orphans
by Kazuo Ishiguro reprinted courtesy of Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc.
The Library of Congress has cataloged the Knopf edition as follows:
Iyer, Pico.
Sun after dark: Flights into the foreign / Pico
Iyer—1st ed.
p. cm.
1. Iyer, Pico—Travel. 2. Voyages and travels. I. Title.
G456.195 2004
910.4—dc21 2003054612
eISBN: 978-0-307-42801-1
v3.0