3.0
The Man Within My Head
ByPublisher Description
We all carry people inside our heads—actors, leaders, writers, people out of history or fiction, met or unmet, who sometimes seem closer to us than people we know.
In The Man Within My Head, Pico Iyer sets out to unravel the mysterious closeness he has always felt with the English writer Graham Greene; he examines Greene’s obsessions, his elusiveness, his penchant for mystery. Iyer follows Greene’s trail from his first novel, The Man Within, to such later classics as The Quiet American and begins to unpack all he has in common with Greene: an English public school education, a lifelong restlessness and refusal to make a home anywhere, a fascination with the complications of faith. The deeper Iyer plunges into their haunted kinship, the more he begins to wonder whether the man within his head is not Greene but his own father, or perhaps some more shadowy aspect of himself.
Drawing upon experiences across the globe, from Cuba to Bhutan, and moving, as Greene would, from Sri Lanka in war to intimate moments of introspection; trying to make sense of his own past, commuting between the cloisters of a fifteenth-century boarding school and California in the 1960s, one of our most resourceful explorers of crossing cultures gives us his most personal and revelatory book.
In The Man Within My Head, Pico Iyer sets out to unravel the mysterious closeness he has always felt with the English writer Graham Greene; he examines Greene’s obsessions, his elusiveness, his penchant for mystery. Iyer follows Greene’s trail from his first novel, The Man Within, to such later classics as The Quiet American and begins to unpack all he has in common with Greene: an English public school education, a lifelong restlessness and refusal to make a home anywhere, a fascination with the complications of faith. The deeper Iyer plunges into their haunted kinship, the more he begins to wonder whether the man within his head is not Greene but his own father, or perhaps some more shadowy aspect of himself.
Drawing upon experiences across the globe, from Cuba to Bhutan, and moving, as Greene would, from Sri Lanka in war to intimate moments of introspection; trying to make sense of his own past, commuting between the cloisters of a fifteenth-century boarding school and California in the 1960s, one of our most resourceful explorers of crossing cultures gives us his most personal and revelatory book.
Download the free Fable app

Stay organized
Keep track of what you’re reading, what you’ve finished, and what’s next.
Build a better TBR
Swipe, skip, and save with our smart list-building tool
Rate and review
Share your take with other readers with half stars, emojis, and tags
Curate your feed
Meet readers like you in the Fable For You feed, designed to build bookish communities5 Reviews
3.0

Edie
Created over 1 year agoShare
Report
“I didn’t dislike the book enough to stop reading it, yet I was grateful when it ended. From the time I began the book to its conclusion, I read five other books. Not a good sign. I love Graham Greene (one of my favorite authors, although he sounds like a horrible man) and I also enjoy reading about Iyer’s travels. What could go wrong?
One of the problems I have is that the author, at times, turns into a fanboy. This came up in a few of his other books. In one his hero was Leonard Cohen, and in another the Dalai Lama. All Iyer’s praise dragged down the writing. The ironic thing is that he is at his most interesting when he’s talking about himself and his own experiences.
So I’d say parts of the book rated five stars, but others bored me to tears. I advise potential readers to think twice before taking the plunge. .”

The Top Shelf
Created about 3 years agoShare
Report

Anupa Sreedhar
Created over 3 years agoShare
Report

Venkataraman Ganesan
Created over 4 years agoShare
Report
“The intrepid cultural explorer Pico Iyer reveals with unnerving candour his innate and inherent fascination for Graham Greene the author and Graham Green the eccentric yet fallible human being. This fascination is succinctly linked to Iyer's relationship with his own father - a formidable connoisseur of literature himself.”

Leslie
Created almost 11 years agoShare
Report
About Pico Iyer
Pico Iyer has written nonfiction books on globalism, Japan, the Fourteenth Dalai Lama, and forgotten places, and novels on Revolutionary Cuba and Islamic mysticism. He regularly writes on literature for The New York Review of Books, on travel for the Financial Times, and on global culture and the news for Time, The New York Times, and magazines around the world.
Other books by Pico Iyer
Start a Book Club
Start a public or private book club with this book on the Fable app today!FAQ
Do I have to buy the ebook to participate in a book club?
Why can’t I buy the ebook on the app?
How is Fable’s reader different from Kindle?
Do you sell physical books too?
Are book clubs free to join on Fable?
How do I start a book club with this book on Fable?