Abandon: A Romance was published by Alfred A. Knopf in 2003. John Macmillan is a graduate student at a California university writing his dissertation on the Sufi poets — specifically on a thirteenth-century Persian mystic whose work celebrates the annihilation of the self in divine love. Into John’s quiet academic life comes Camilla — beautiful, enigmatic, possibly dangerous — and he finds himself experiencing the kind of abandon his subjects wrote about: the loss of rational self-control in the presence of overwhelming desire.
The novel moves between California (sunshine, universities, rational Western inquiry) and Iran (ancient, theocratic, the homeland of the Sufi tradition John studies). The question it poses is whether spiritual ecstasy and erotic obsession are the same thing experienced differently — or fundamentally different states that merely resemble each other.
Iyer’s only novel received mixed reviews — critics admired the prose (as polished as his nonfiction) but found the narrative structure insufficiently dramatic. The novel works better as a meditation than as a story: its real subject is not the love affair but the relationship between intellectual understanding and lived experience. John understands Sufi abandon perfectly as a scholar; experiencing it transforms him in ways scholarship never predicted.
Collecting Abandon
First edition (Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 2003): Hardcover with dust jacket.
Market values:
- First edition, fine/fine: $15–$35
- Very good: $8–$15
Projected values (2026–2036): Modest appreciation.
Sufi Thriller
Abandon (2003) is Iyer’s second novel — a literary thriller about a graduate student at UC Santa Cruz researching Sufi mysticism who travels to Iran and becomes entangled with a mysterious woman. The novel explores the relationship between scholarly knowledge and lived spiritual experience, and between Western rationalism and Eastern mysticism. It is more ambitious than Cuba and the Night and more successful as fiction, though it remains little known compared to Iyer’s non-fiction.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Iyer interested in Sufism? His interest in contemplative traditions — Zen, Christian monasticism, and Sufism — runs through all his work. Abandon explores Sufism’s emphasis on losing the self through love, which connects to Iyer’s broader theme of finding meaning through surrender rather than acquisition.