Pico Iyer is a traveller who particularly likes places that the rest of us would make a point of avoiding. This is a book about such places 'lonely places' as Iyer calls them 'the places that don't fit in'. Here is Iyer in North Korea (It had seemed, at the time, a good idea') in Argentina (five national economic plans in eight months and a 600% bank interest); in Cuba (where the hotel in Holguin offered only beer for breakfast); in Iceland (where the rock formation in the Westman Isles formerly known as Cleopatra is now known as Marge Simpson. ); in Bhutan and Vietnam and Australia. With the same wit he showed in VIDEO NIGHT IN KATHMANDU, Iyer illuminates the oddities of these places. His world is unlike anybody else's - and irresistable.