Read about Pico Iyer net worth, age, wife, children, height, family, parents, salary and career as well as other information you need to know.
Introduction
Pico Iyer is a British-born essayist and novelist. He is best known chiefly for his travel writing. He is the author of numerous books on crossing cultures including Video Night in Kathmandu, The Lady and the Monk and The Global Soul. He has been a contributor to Time, Harper’s, The New York Review of Books, and The New York Times.
Early life
| Name | Pico Iyer |
| Net Worth | $5 million |
| Occupation | Essayist, Novelist |
| Age | 66 years |
| Height | 1.78m |
Siddharth Pico Raghavan Iyer was born on February 11, 1957 (age 66 years) in Oxford, England. He is the son of Indian parents. His father was Raghavan N. Iyer, a philosopher and political theorist then enrolled in doctoral studies at the University of Oxford. His mother was the religious scholar and teacher Nandini Nanak Mehta.
Iyer is the great-great-grandson of Indian Gujarati writer Mahipatram Nilkanth. Both of his parents grew up in India and then went to England for tertiary education. His name is a combination of the Buddha’s name, Siddhartha and that of the Italian Renaissance philosopher Pico della Mirandola.
When Iyer was seven, in 1964, his family moved to California, where his father started working with the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions, a California-based think tank, and started teaching at the University of California, Santa Barbara. For over a decade, Iyer moved between schools and college in England and his parents’ home in California.
He was a King’s Scholar at Eton College, studied at Magdalen College, Oxford and was awarded a congratulatory double first in English literature in 1978. He then received an A.M. in literature from Harvard University in 1980. He received the [Oxford MA] in 1982.
Career
Pico Iyer taught writing and literature at Harvard before joining Time in 1982 as a writer on world affairs. Since then, he has traveled widely, from North Korea to Easter Island, and from Paraguay to Ethiopia, while writing works of non-fiction and two novels, including Video Night in Kathmandu (1988), The Lady and the Monk (1991), The Global Soul (2000) and The Man Within My Head (2012).
Iyer is also a frequent speaker at literary festivals and universities around the world. He delivered popular TED talks in 2013, 2014, 2016 and 2019 and has twice been a Fellow at the World Economic Forum in Davos.
In 2019, he served as Ferris Professor of Journalism at Princeton University and Guest Director of the Telluride Film Festival. He was also the first writer-in-residence at Raffles Hotel Singapore, where he released his book, This Could be Home (2019), which explores Singapore’s heritage through its landmarks.
His writings build on his growing up in a combination of English, American, and Indian cultures. Travel is a key theme in most of his works. In one of his works, The Global Soul (2000) he takes on the international airport as a central subject, along with associated jet lag, displacement and cultural mingling. As a travel writer, he often writes of living between the cracks and outside fixed categories.
Many of his books have been about trying to see from within some society or way of life but from an outsider’s perspective. He has filed stories from Bhutan, Nepal, Ethiopia, Cuba, Argent ina, Japan, and North Korea Some of the topics that he explores in his works include revolution in Cuba, Sufism, Buddhist Kyoto, and global disorientation.
In his own words from a 1993 article in Harper’s, “I am a multinational soul on a multinational globe on which more and more countries are as polyglot and restless as airports. Taking planes seems as natural to me as picking up the phone or going to school; I fold up myself and carry it around as if it were an overnight bag.”
Pico Iyer’s writing alternates between the monastery and the airport, the Indian writer Pradeep Sebastian writes about Iyer, as “Thomas Merton on a frequent flier pass aiming to bring new global energies and possibilities into non-fiction”.
He has written numerous pieces on world affairs for Time, including cover stories, and the “Woman of the Year” story on Corazon Aquino in 1986. He has written on literature for The New York Review of Books; on globalism for Harper’s; on travel for the Financial Times; and on many other themes for The New York Times, National Geographic, and The Times Literary Supplement, contributing up to a hundred articles a year to various publications.
He has contributed liner notes for four Leonard Cohen albums. His books have appeared in 23 languages so far, including Turkish, Russian, and Indonesian. He has also written introductions to more than 70 books, including works by R. K. Narayan, Somerset Maugham, Graham Greene, Michael Ondaatje, Peter Matthiessen, and Isamu Noguchi.
Pico Iyer has appeared seven times in the annual Best Spiritual Writing anthology, and three times in the annual Best American Travel Writing anthology, and has served as guest editor for both. He has also appeared in the Best American Essays anthology.
The Utne Reader named him in 1995 as one of 100 Visionaries worldwide who could change your life, while the New Yorker observed that “As a guide to far-flung places, Pico Iyer can hardly be surpassed.” His book, The Lady and the Monk (1991), was a memoir and a reflection of his relationship with his spouse Takeuchi.
His family home in Santa Barbara, California burned down due to a wildfire in 1990. Reflecting on this event, in his words, “For more and more of us, home has really less to do with a piece of soil, than you could say, with a piece of soul.” He splits his time between Japan and California.
He has known the 14th Dalai Lama since he was in his late teens, when he accompanied his father to Dharamshala, India, in 1974. In discussions about his spirituality, Iyer has mentioned not having a formal meditation practice, but practicing regular solitude, visiting a remote hermitage near Big Sur several times a year.
Pico Iyer Wife
Pico Iyer is married to his wife Hiroko Takeuchi. His wife is Japanese and has two children from a previous marriage. Iyer has been based since 1992 in Nara, Japan, where he lives with his wife Hiroko Takeuchi. As of November 2023, Pico and his wife Hiroko are still married and living a happy life with each other.
Pico Iyer net worth
How much is Pico Iyer worth? Pico Iyer net worth is estimated at around $5 million. His main source of income is from his primary work as an essayist and novelist. His salary per month and other career earnings are over $245,000 dollars annually. His remarkable career achievements have earned him some luxurious lifestyles and some fancy car trips. He is one of the richest and most influential essayists and novelists. He stands at an appealing height of 1.78m and has a good body weight which suits his personality.