Dark Shadows Falling

Joe Simpson has become a legend, not only among mountaineers, but to thousands who would shun his dangerous lifestyle but have been inspired by his honesty and courage.In 1992, an Indian climber was left to die on the South Col of Mount Everest by other climbers who watched his feebly waving hand from their tent. He was filmed in his last hours for a television feature. Why did onlookers not hold the dying man's hand and comfort him? The answer appals Joe Simpson, who was himself left for dead in a cervasse in Peru in 1985 - 'because it might compromise their summit bid'. It is an ethical question that Joe is forced to confront as he climbs a hazardous route on Pumori.Now that Everest has become the playground of the rich, where commercial operators offer guided tours to the top, camping admist the detritus and unburied corpses of previous less fortunate climbers, Joe wonders if the noble instincts that once characterised mountaineering have been irrevocably displaced - as in politics, in business, in the media and in other facets of society.

“Simpson writes better on the darker side of mountaineering than any man alive”

-- Paul Johnson The Times
His concern is that the strong ethics and selfless instincts that have characterised mountaineering in the past are being eroded by modern-day ambition, selfishness and greed -- Audrey Salkeld Sunday Times
Simpson is an elegant stylist and as usual his prose is laced with humour Daily Telegraph
An astonishing first chapter describes thoughts and feeling of a mountaineer slowly dying on Everest, while other climbers relax in a tent a few feet away. They know he is dying but ignore his feeble wave. Simpson is horrified that such selfishness should gradually invade the mountaineering fantasy -- Brian Masters Mail on Sunday

Joe Simpson is the author of several bestselling books, of which the first,Touching the Void, won both the NCR award and the Boardman Tasker Award. His later books are This Game of Ghosts - the sequel to Touching the Void - Storms of Silence, The Beckoning Silence and two novels- The Water People and The Sound of Gravity.

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