A Return to Self

"In A Return to Self, Aatish Taseer shows us how to see the world: He reveals what's beneath the facades, what we're missing, how it's all connected—and also how it all feels, tastes, and smells. He takes us deeper, while understanding that the surface is a reality too." —Benjamin Moser, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Sontag: Her Life and Work

“From the high Andes to the heart of Mongolia, Aatish Taseer writes as captivatingly about history, spirituality, and the senses as he does poignantly. These essays, suffused with themes of connection and separation, deliver a lyrical meditation on how traveling far from home can bring you closer to yourself.” —Maya Jasanoff, author of The Dawn Watch

“Aatish Taseer is a rare talent, and the finest writer on place working today.  His work, which features remarkable feats of observation as well as prose, is some of the smartest and most thoughtful I’ve read on the complicated joy of syncretism, and how one culture writes itself on another – a subject that seems more urgent than ever.” —Hanya Yanagihara, author of A Little Life

“At once restless and meditative, A Return to Self is a writer’s journey into the liminal spaces—of memory, nationality, culture, and sexuality—that we inhabit. From a collection of moving and erudite travel pieces, Aatish Taseer brilliantly creates a portrait of the outsider, whose search for belonging defines the age in which we live.” —Tash Aw, author of Strangers on a Pier

"Writers I admire travel to discover other states of mind. But the even more admirable ones travel also to find new parts of their most authentic selves. In these pages, Taseer is such a traveler: the maps he is working with are those of the world, and also of the body, the soul, and the senses. His findings are fascinating and rich." —Amitava Kumar, author of My Beloved Life