Himalaya

Empires, explorers and sacred summits - an epic story of the roof of the world.

In Himalaya, award-winning writer and climber Ed Douglas traces the intertwined histories of the mountains and their people. From Buddhist pilgrims and imperial explorers to mountaineers and freedom fighters, he reveals how these peaks have shaped spirituality, science and geopolitics for millennia.

Drawing on years of travel and meticulous research, Douglas combines geography, biography and adventure into a sweeping narrative of conflict, resilience and wonder across the most dramatic landscape on Earth.

'Magnificent... unlikely to be surpassed' Telegraph
'A magisterial account of the complex human history of the Himalaya' The Times

Autorentext
Ed Douglas is a prize-winning writer about mountains whose books include Himalaya: A Human History, which was shortlisted for the Duff Cooper Prize, Kinder Scout: The People's Mountain and a biography of Tenzing Norgay. He won the Boardman Tasker Award for mountain literature in 2010. He has been a climber for forty-five years and was for a decade the editor of mountaineering's oldest publication, the Alpine Journal. He lives in Sheffield.

Zusammenfassung

'Magnificent ... this book is unlikely to be surpassed' Telegraph
**
This is the first major history of the Himalaya: an epic story of peoples, cultures and adventures among the world's highest mountains.**

SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2020 DUFF COOPER PRIZE

An epic story of peoples, cultures and adventures among the world's highest mountains: here Jesuit missionaries exchanged technologies with Tibetan Lamas, Mongol Khans employed Nepali craftsmen, Armenian merchants exchanged musk and gold with Mughals.

Featuring scholars and tyrants, bandits and CIA agents, go-betweens and revolutionaries, Himalaya is a panoramic, character-driven history on the grandest but also the most human scale, by far the most comprehensive yet written, encompassing geology and genetics, botany and art, and bursting with stories of courage and resourcefulness.

'Magisterial' The Times
**
'His observations are sharp...his writing glows' New York Review of Books**

SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2021 BOARDMAN TASKER AWARD FOR MOUNTAIN LITERATURE