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Himalaya

Himalaya

A Human History

Summary

'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

Reviews

  • Magnificent ... a far-reaching, compendious and elegantly turned examination of a region and its peoples, this book is unlikely to be surpassed
    Telegraph

About the author

Ed Douglas

Ed Douglas is an award-winning writer who has reported from the Himalaya for over twenty-five years, covering the Maoist insurgency in Nepal and the Tibetan occupation. The author of a dozen books, including a biography of Tenzing Norgay, he is also a climber with first ascents in the Himalaya, and edits the Alpine Journal. He lives in Sheffield.
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