Autumn Light: Japan’s Season of Fire and Farewells
PICO IYER
(Bloomsbury Circus, 256 PP, £20)
Tablet bookshop price £18 • Tel 020 7799 4064

Pico Iyer writes to reverse the old Chinese proverb “To travel hopefully is better than to arrive”. For him the arrival is what matters. Often described as a travel writer, he’s really a poet of remaining, finding somewhere to stay and observe with acute eye and ear the small things of life. And in Japan’s old capital Nara, where he spends half the year with his Japanese wife, Hiroko, he’s found the perfect place, to which he returns from the hectic West with relief and hope.

For the Japanese, autumn has a particular grace. The book’s subtitle, Japan’s Season of Fire and Farewells, explains why. Beauty haunts it alongside death, and it’s the death of his father-in-law that brings Pico Iyer back to Japan for an extended stay and a chance to witness the tiny rituals of family and community as the trees turn and people fade away – in “the season where everything falls away” – including Hiroko’s mother who’s in hospital with Alzheimer’s.