Peter Matthiessen9781784876845
This is the account of a journey to the dazzling Tibetan plateau of Dolpo in the high Himalayas. In 1973 Matthiessen made the 250-mile trek to Dolpo, as part of an expedition to study wild blue sheep. It was an arduous, sometimes dangerous, physical endeavour: exertion, blisters, blizzards, endless negotiations with sherpas, quaking cold. But it was also a ‘journey of the heart’ – amongst the beauty and indifference of the mountains Matthiessen was searching for solace. He was also searching for a glimpse of a snow leopard, a creature so rarely spotted as to be almost mythical.
Review
A beautiful book, and worthy of the mountains he is among – Paul Theroux –
“Both a naturalist and a spiritual classic. It overflows with crystalline descriptions of animals and mountains: “The golden birds fall from the morning sun like blowing sparks that drop away and are extinguished in the dark,” Matthiessen writes. But it’s also an austere Buddhist memoir in which the snow leopard is as alluring and mysterious as enlightenment itself.” — New Yorker
“A masterpiece that exceeds the boundaries of the travel genre and envelops you with its incredible prose..” – -Wall Street Journal, 10 Classic Armchair Travel Books to Get You Through Coronavirus
As much the chronicle of an inner journey as it is the learned recording of an unfamiliar territory…a timeless account – – Independent
An evocative account of a remote and timeless place and its people – – Sunday Times
About the Author
Peter Matthiessen was a naturalist, explorer and writer. His works of fiction include At Play in the Fields of the Lord, Far Tortuga and the acclaimed ‘Watson Trilogy’. He was a founder of the Paris Review and the only writer to have won the National Book Award in both fiction and nonfiction. His explorations resulted in many fine works of non-fiction, among them The Snow Leopard, The Cloud Forest and The Tree where Man was Born. He died in 2014, aged 86.
