Pico Iyer

Why you should listen

Novelist and nonfiction author Pico Iyer has written about everything from Islamic mysticism to the 21st-century world order. His 17 books (translated into 23 languages) include The Open Road, The Art of Stillness and, most recently, The Half Known Life, which explores ideas of utopia and how we might find peace amid difficulty and suffering. For the past 50 years, he has regularly spoken and traveled with the Dalai Lama — and has made more than 100 retreats at a Benedictine monastery in California.