This beautifully written, heartfelt memoir touched a nerve among both readers and reviewers. In Eat, Pray, Love, Elizabeth Gilbert tells how she made the difficult choice to leave behind all the trappings of modern American success (marriage, house in the country, career) and find, instead, what she truly wanted from life. Setting out for a year to study three different aspects of her nature amid three different cultures, Gilbert explored the art of pleasure in Italy and the art of devotion in India, and then a balance between the two on the Indonesian island of Bali. By turns rapturous and rueful, this wise and funny author (whom Booklist calls "Anne Lamott's** hip, yoga-practicing, footloose younger sister") is poised to garner yet more adoring fans.

* Eat Pray Love  is a 2010 comedy-drama film starring Julia Roberts as Elizabeth Gilbert, based on Gilbert's best-selling memoir of the same name.  The film was co-written and directed by Ryan Murphy. It opened in the United States on Aug. 13, 2010.

** Ann Lamott is a novelist and non-fiction writer. She is also a political activist, public speaker and writing teacher. Based in the San Francisco Bay Area, her nonfiction works are largely autobiographical. Marked by their self-deprecating humor and openness, Lamott's writings cover such subjects as alcoholism, being a single mother, depression and Christianity.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:  Elizabeth Gilbert is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Eat, Pray, Love, as well as the short story collection, Pilgrims--a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Award, and winner of the 1999 John C. Zacharis First Book Award from Ploughshares.  A Pushcart Prize winner and National Magazine Award-nominated journalist, Gilbert works as writer-at-large for GQ. Her journalism has been published in Harper's Bazaar, Spin, and The New York Times Magazine, and her stories have appeared in Esquire, Story, and the Paris Review.