The mountaineer Joe Simpson is probably most known for his
bestseller, Touching the Void, which recounts his epic battle for
survival in the Andes after a horrifying climbing accident. In the
intervening years Simpson has gone on to climb in some of the
world's most challenging landscapes. Unfortunately he has also had
to endure the loss of many climbing friends in accidents and this
has increasingly caused him to question what it is that draws him
to the mountains. With the approach of his 40th birthday and the
death of a particularly close friend Simpson comes to a momentous
decision - he will climb a selected shortlist of routes and then
give it up. Here he recounts the psychological traumas that led him
to make this surprising resolve. In harrowing detail he recalls the
deaths of several of his fellow mountaineers, as often the result
of bad luck as of misjudgement, and reveals his own doubts and
fears when answering the mountains' siren songs. Simpson writes
particularly well about his lifelong addiction to exhilaration and
adrenalin highs - an addiction that is in direct competition with
the growing certainty that, for him, it is no longer worth the
risks. Above all, Simpson allows the reader to experience the
biting cold, pain, gut-wrenching fear and elation of high-level
mountaineering. After much soul-searching Simpson decides that an
ascent of the North Face of the Eiger will be a fitting culmination
of his climbing career and his attempt, along with climbing partner
Ray Delaney, forms the compelling conclusion to this fascinating
book. Whether Simpson will really be able to wean himself away from
high places is another matter entirely; a man who has spent his
whole life under the spell of their beckoning silence may always
have to climb just one more time. (Kirkus UK)
Joe Simpson has experienced a life filled with adventure but marred by death. He has endured the painful attrition of climbing friends in accidents, calling into question the perilously exhilarating activity to which he has devoted his life. Probability is inexorably closing in. The tragic loss of a close friend forces a momentous decision upon him. It is time to turn his back on the mountains that he has loved. Never more alive than when most at risk, he has come to see a last climb on the hooded, mile-high North Face of the Eiger as the cathartic finale. In a narrative which takes the reader through extreme experiences, from an avalanche in Bolivia, ice-climbing in the Alps and Colorado and paragliding in Spain - before his final confrontation with the Eiger - Simpson reveals the inner truth of climbing, exploring both the power of the mind and the frailties of the body.
The subject of his new book is the siren song of fear and his struggle to come to terms with it.
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