Overview

The extraordinary sequel to the bestselling classic Touching the Void When Simon Yates cut the rope and sent his friend plummeting to an ordeal few mountaineers can have contemplated, the outcome was totally unpredictable. That Joe Simpson survived is a revelation of the power of the human spirit to overcome fear, pain and deprivation of almost unimaginable intensity. He did not expect to live it all over again - more than once. The first test was to write his award-winning account of the ordeal in Touching the Void. That meant dragging the terrifying experience out of the deeper shadows of his memory. Then, another fall in the Himalayas crippled and almost broke him. Yet he felt forced to test his nerve again and struggled on crutches to 20,000 feet on Pumori, near Everest. On his descent he heard that a young first-time climber had been killed by a chance rockfall. What sense could he make now of this game of ghosts that had claimed the lives of so many of his friends. This extraordinary memoir is Joe Simpson's attempt to find catharsis and some explanation for the urge he felt since childhood to measure fear and embrace the unknown.

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9780099380115

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Reviews

Simpson has a great way with words and his prose grips... A fascinating tale, wonderfully told -- Ranulph Fiennes Sunday Times This Game Of Ghosts is a strange, beautiful, bewildering and often very moving book... Simpson paints a warm, vivid picture of the climbing fraternity, and approaches a fusion of poetry and philosophy sometimes with his description of the impact on oneself of facing down the fear of dying; through this coming closer to understanding death, and thereby, joyously life The List His fame is not due to the incidents themselves so much as the brilliant way he writes about them. The result leaves an impression of total honesty and lets the intense excitement of the stories speak for themselves Independent This book is not so much about why we climb - Simpson can't answer that for himself, much less the rest of us - but why we take such risks for such fleeting rewards. Overall this is a great book - perhaps the most honest bit of climbing writing I have read -- John Sherman Climbing This is Simpson's rehabilitation. It is deeply honest, perplexed, confused, has no easy conclusions...This is not so much another climbing book as a psychological document, terrifying, challenging and extraordinary Scotsman

This Game of Ghosts continues Joe Simpson's story, following Touching the Void, in which he described a fall in the Himalayas which crippled and almost broke him. This is a memoir of the signposts that have directed him since childhood to measure fear and embrace the unknown.

"""Simpson has a great way with words and his prose grips... A fascinating tale, wonderfully told"" -- Ranulph Fiennes Sunday Times ""This Game Of Ghosts is a strange, beautiful, bewildering and often very moving book... Simpson paints a warm, vivid picture of the climbing fraternity, and approaches a fusion of poetry and philosophy sometimes with his description of the impact on oneself of facing down the fear of dying; through this coming closer to understanding death, and thereby, joyously life"" The List ""His fame is not due to the incidents themselves so much as the brilliant way he writes about them. The result leaves an impression of total honesty and lets the intense excitement of the stories speak for themselves"" Independent ""This book is not so much about why we climb - Simpson can't answer that for himself, much less the rest of us - but why we take such risks for such fleeting rewards. Overall this is a great book - perhaps the most honest bit of climbing writing I have read"" -- John Sherman Climbing ""This is Simpson's rehabilitation. It is deeply honest, perplexed, confused, has no easy conclusions...This is not so much another climbing book as a psychological document, terrifying, challenging and extraordinary"" Scotsman"

""Simpson has a great way with words and his prose grips... A fascinating tale, wonderfully told"" -- Ranulph Fiennes Sunday Times ""This Game Of Ghosts is a strange, beautiful, bewildering and often very moving book... Simpson paints a warm, vivid picture of the climbing fraternity, and approaches a fusion of poetry and philosophy sometimes with his description of the impact on oneself of facing down the fear of dying; through this coming closer to understanding death, and thereby, joyously life"" The List ""His fame is not due to the incidents themselves so much as the brilliant way he writes about them. The result leaves an impression of total honesty and lets the intense excitement of the stories speak for themselves"" Independent ""This book is not so much about why we climb - Simpson can't answer that for himself, much less the rest of us - but why we take such risks for such fleeting rewards. Overall this is a great book - perhaps the most honest bit of climbing writing I have read"" -- John Sherman Climbing ""This is Simpson's rehabilitation. It is deeply honest, perplexed, confused, has no easy conclusions...This is not so much another climbing book as a psychological document, terrifying, challenging and extraordinary"" Scotsman

Author Information

Joe Simpson is the author of several best-selling 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, Dark Shadows Falling, The Beckoning Silence and one previous novel, The Water People.

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