
Aflame
Learning from Silence
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Narrated by:
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Pico Iyer
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By:
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Pico Iyer
About this listen
NATIONAL BESTSELLER
“Reading Aflame may help many to lead lives of greater compassion and deeper peace of mind.”—His Holiness the Dalai Lama
From the bestselling author of The Art of Stillness, a revelatory exploration of the abiding clarity and calm to be found in quiet retreat
Pico Iyer has made more than one hundred retreats over the past three decades to a small Benedictine hermitage high above the sea in Big Sur, California. He’s not a Christian—or a member of any religious group—but his life has been transformed by these periods of time spent in silence. That silence reminds him of what is essential and awakens a joy that nothing can efface. It’s not just freedom from distraction and noise and rush: it’s a reminder of some deeper truths he misplaced along the way.
In Aflame, Iyer connects with inner stillness and joy in his many seasons at the monastery, even as his life is going through constant change: a house burns down, a parent dies, a daughter is diagnosed with cancer. He shares the revelations he experiences, alongside wisdom from other nonmonastics who have learned from adversity and inwardness. And most profoundly, he shows how solitude can be a training in community and companionship. In so doing, he offers a unique outsider’s view of monastic life—and of a group of selfless souls who have dedicated their days to ensuring there’s a space for quiet and recollection that’s open to us all.
Radiant, intimate, and gripping, Aflame offers ageless counsel about the power of silence and what it can teach us about how to live, how to love, and, ultimately, how to die.
©2025 Pico Iyer (P)2025 Penguin AudioListeners also enjoyed...
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Critic reviews
“Luminous...the author brilliantly illuminates philosophical insights about the nature of the self, the world, and how silence serves as a conduit between the two, often in elegant, evocative prose... This is stunning.”–Publishers Weekly, starred review
“Beautiful… Iyer masterfully and lyrically shows us how we may need to find a new home–one far more solemn, communal and silent than our present one–in order to return properly to ourselves.”–Alain de Botton
“Luminous and exquisitely simple, it is astonishing how Iyer transports you into the joy of the mystery. And then, lit with love, he shows you how to find it everywhere.”–Jack Kornfield
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Story
Robert Macfarlane brings his glittering style to a profound work of travel writing, reportage, and natural history. Is a River Alive? is a joyful, mind-expanding exploration of an ancient, urgent idea: that rivers are living beings who should be recognized as such in imagination and law. Macfarlane takes listeners on three unforgettable journeys teeming with extraordinary people, stories, and places: to the miraculous cloud-forests and mountain streams of Ecuador, to the wounded creeks and lagoons of India, and to the spectacular wild rivers of Canada.
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Love of language / Love of nature / Moral clarity
- By Michael McNulty on 05-21-25
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Kokoro
- Japanese Wisdom for a Life Well Lived
- By: Beth Kempton
- Narrated by: Beth Kempton
- Length: 6 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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Join author Beth Kempton on a life-changing pilgrimage through rural Japan in search of answers to some of life's biggest questions: How do we find calm in the chaos and beauty in the darkness? How do we let go of the past and stop worrying about the future? What can an awareness of impermanence teach us about living well?
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Incredible sharing of wisdom
- By Shelly Neto, RN on 11-10-24
By: Beth Kempton
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One Long River of Song
- Notes on Wonder
- By: Brian Doyle, David James Duncan - foreword
- Narrated by: George Newbern, Mary Doyle, Liam Doyle, and others
- Length: 7 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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When Brian Doyle passed away at the age of 60 after a bout with brain cancer, he left behind a cult-like following of devoted listeners who regard his writing as one of the best-kept secrets of the 21st century. Doyle writes with a delightful sense of wonder about the sanctity of everyday things, and about love and connection in all their forms: spiritual love, brotherly love, romantic love, and even the love of a nine-foot sturgeon.
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Listen. With your heart and your mind. Listen.
- By Amazon Customer on 03-28-21
By: Brian Doyle, and others
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The Gifts of Reading
- By: Alice Pung, Robert Macfarlane, William Boyd, and others
- Narrated by: Frank Laverty, Gabrielle Glaister, Laila Pyne, and others
- Length: 8 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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In this cornucopia of an anthology, you will find essays by some of the world's most beloved novelists, nonfiction writers, essayists and poets. You will see books taking flight in flocks, migrating around the world, landing in people's hearts and changing them for a day or a year or a lifetime. You will see books sparking wonder or anger; throwing open windows into other languages, other cultures, other minds; causing people to fall in love or to fight for what is right.
By: Alice Pung, and others
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The Shapeless Unease
- By: Samantha Harvey
- Narrated by: Samantha Harvey
- Length: 4 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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The Shapeless Unease is Harvey's darkly funny and deeply intelligent anatomy of her insomnia, an immersive interior monologue of a year without one of the most basic human needs. Original and profound, and narrated with a lucid breathlessness, this is a startlingly insightful exploration of memory, writing and influence, death, and the will to survive, from "this generation's Virginia Woolf" (Telegraph).
By: Samantha Harvey
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Shattered
- A Memoir
- By: Hanif Kureishi
- Narrated by: Art Malik
- Length: 6 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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In late 2022, in Rome, Hanif Kureishi had a fall. When he came to, he realized he could no longer walk. He could do nothing without the help of others and required constant care in a hospital. So began a yearlong odyssey through the medical systems of Rome and Italy, with the hope of somehow being able to return home to his house in London.
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Honest, courageous and beautifully written
- By A. Clarens on 04-18-25
By: Hanif Kureishi
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Rosarita
- By: Anita Desai
- Narrated by: Meera Simhan
- Length: 2 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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Away from her home in India to study Spanish, Bonita sits on a bench in El Jardin de San Miguel, Mexico, basking in the park’s lush beauty, when she slowly becomes aware that she is being watched. An elderly woman approaches her, claiming that she knew Bonita’s mother—that they had been friends when Bonita’s mother had lived in Mexico as a talented young artist. Bonita tells the stranger that she must be mistaken; her mother was not a painter and had never travelled to Mexico. Though the stranger leaves, Bonita cannot shake the feeling that she is being followed.
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Soooo… what exactly happened here
- By Amazon Customer on 01-28-25
By: Anita Desai
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Going Home
- A Novel
- By: Tom Lamont
- Narrated by: Jot Davies
- Length: 10 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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Going Home is a sparkling, funny, bighearted story of family and what happens when three men—all of whom are completely ill-suited for fatherhood—take charge of a toddler following an unexpected loss.
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Great Story
- By E G Neufeld on 03-12-25
By: Tom Lamont
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Memorial Days
- A Memoir
- By: Geraldine Brooks
- Narrated by: Geraldine Brooks
- Length: 4 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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Many cultural and religious traditions expect those who are grieving to step away from the world. In contemporary life, we are more often met with red tape and to-do lists. This is exactly what happened to Geraldine Brooks when her partner of more than three decades, Tony Horwitz–just sixty years old and, to her knowledge, vigorous and healthy–collapsed and died on a Washington, D. C. sidewalk.
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Uninspired, mediocre writing.
- By C. Tyler on 03-04-25
By: Geraldine Brooks
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On Mysticism
- The Experience of Ecstasy
- By: Simon Critchley
- Narrated by: Simon Critchley
- Length: 8 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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Mysticism is about existential ecstasy—an experience of heightening one's senses and self into a sheer feeling of aliveness. Mystical experiences offer us a practical way to open our thoughts and deepen the sense of our lives, whether through a mainstream connection to God or by taking part in mind-altering experiences. Here, Simon Critchley explores the history and practice of mysticism, from its origins in Eastern and Western religion, through its association with esoteric and occult knowledge, and up to the ecstatic modernism of T.S. Eliot and others.
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Thank you Dr. Critchley
- By Kimberley on 04-22-25
By: Simon Critchley
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Land Power
- Who Has It, Who Doesn't, and How That Determines the Fate of Societies
- By: Michael Albertus
- Narrated by: Braden Wright
- Length: 11 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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For millennia, land has been a symbol of wealth and privilege. But the true power of land ownership is even greater than we might think. In Land Power, political scientist Michael Albertus shows that who owns the land determines whether a society will be equal or unequal, whether it will develop or decline, and whether it will safeguard or sacrifice its environment.
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Great stories of what countries are doing that we never hear about. This is led by working with the people. Excellent…..
- By Hal on 02-24-25
By: Michael Albertus
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Permission
- The New Memoirist and the Courage to Create
- By: Elissa Altman
- Narrated by: Elissa Altman
- Length: 6 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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After writing three critically acclaimed memoirs and a decade of teaching memoir workshops at every level, Elissa Altman has helped students face the elephant in every writer’s room: how to craft the stories that are most vital to them despite the voices that have told them not to. Permission is a master course, not only on how to craft memoir, but how to begin and keep going when you’ve been told you can’t, and how to how to give yourself permission to transcend the fear that keeps vital stories from being written.
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Exceptional storytelling
- By dana dunn on 03-27-25
By: Elissa Altman
Lessons for a community suffering from fires
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The peace I feel listening to Pico
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Explores the poetry of fire and being
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this book is a balm to our wounded soul. in time of incessant schooling and breaking news we are all confused and lost. we have to step back and" smell the Flowers. and Pick shows or this in his special way the book is read buy Pico and his melodious voice contributes to the quality of the book. I do highly recommend the book.
zeljko Zic
silence aflame
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The beauty of silence through his words
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Gratitude for Pico Iyer
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To find something you cannot doubt may be as much as some need to get to faith
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The title is misleading. The book doesn't explore "silence" but only talks about being on tge periphery of monasteries.
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