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In The Man Within My Head, the author explores his unexplainable obsession with the writer Graham Greene, whom he perceives as a father figure. Summary Of The Book Most people have their idols, people who inspire them. One of these might stand out, having left a path for the person to follow and be motivated. Fo Pico Iyer, that person is writer Graham Greene. Pico Iyer had always felt a strange bond with Graham Greene ever since he started reading his books. He never met the writer. The one tangible link he had with Greene was a polite refusal that Greene wrote him in response to an impassioned plea for an interview. Yet, for Iyer, Greene was like a father figure, a person who inspired and guided him. In ways that he could not explain, Iyer felt he shared a connection with him. So, he sets out to explore and define this connection in this book, The Man Within My Head. As he never had any contact with Greene, the author's works are his only source through which he could explore him. Iyer does this, trying to unravel the persona of Greene through his books, beginning with The Man Within, Greene’s first book, and through other works like The Quiet American. Like Greene, Iyer was educated in English boarding schools and he too lived in many places across the world, with no definite roots anywhere. As Iyer explores these and other links he has with Greene, he is led back to his own father, Raghavan Iyer, a professor and philosopher. Iyer tries to capture Greene’s spirit, the aspects of the writer that inspired not just him, but so many of his other readers. In the process, he ends up examining his connection with own father and even certain aspects of his own self. About Pico Iyer Pico Iyer is a travel writer and novelist. Other books by this author include Video Night in Kathmandu: And Other Reports from the Not-so-Far East, Falling off the Map: Some Lonely Places of the World, Imagining Canada: An Outsider's Hope for a Global Future, The Recovery of Innocence, and The Lady and the Monk: Four Seasons in Kyoto. Siddharth Pico Raghavan Iyer was born in England in 1957 to Indian parents who were both academics who had settled in England. In 1964, Raghavan Iyer, Pico Iyer’s father, started teaching at the University of California in Santa Barbara. Pico Iyer divided his time between England and America as he continued his studies in England in boarding schools and later at Oxford University and Harvard University. Pico Iyer taught at Harvard University for some time before he joined Time magazine, writing on world affairs. He is a popular travel writer, and he has written other works of nonfiction and two novels.