One of our most perceptive travel writers embarks on an exploration of the world's holiest places and where we might find paradise on Earth.

It's so easy, I thought, to place Paradise in the past or the future ? anywhere but here.

After half a century of travel, Pico Iyer asks himself what kind of paradise can ever be found in a world of unceasing conflict. In a spectacular journey, both inward and outward, he roams the globe from Jerusalem to Belfast to North Korea, from crowded mosques in Iran to a holy mountain in Japan. By the end, he has upended any of our expectations and dared to suggest that we can find paradise right in the heart of our angry and confused world.