Pallavi Aiyar

Pallavi Aiyar is an award-winning foreign correspondent and author. She writes a weekly substack newsletter on global travel and culture: The Global Jigsaw.

She is also Adjunct Professor in the Media and Communications department at IE University in Madrid, Spain where she teaches an elective titled Global Media, Local Lenses, in addition to running workshops on cross-cultural communication and creative writing.

Pallavi has spent over two decades reporting from across China, Indonesia, Japan and Europe, contributing to publications that include, The New York Times, Granta, The Monocle, The Los Angeles Review of Books, Noema Magazine, The Sunday Telegraph, The South China Morning Post, The Wall Street Journal, The Caravan, The Hindu, The Indian Express, The Business Standard, Nikkei Asian Review, The Indian Quarterly, Mint, The Wire, Verve, Politica Exterior and El Pais.

She is the author of eight books, including two novels. Her work has bene translated into Malayalam, Tamil, Italian, Dutch and Japanese. Her debut book on China (2008), Smoke and Mirrors won the Crossword-Vodafone prize for non-fiction. Her last book (2021), Orienting: An Indian in Japan, was shortlisted for TOI’s AutHer award. Her new work, Travels in the Other Place: Pursuing the Self in Eight Acts will be published by Westland in November.

She speaks English, Hindi, Mandarin Chinese and Spanish