Empires, explorers and sacred summits - an epic story of the roof of the world.
In Himalaya, award-winning writer and climber Ed Douglas traces the intertwined histories of the mountains and their people. From Buddhist pilgrims and imperial explorers to mountaineers and freedom fighters, he reveals how these peaks have shaped spirituality, science and geopolitics for millennia.
Drawing on years of travel and meticulous research, Douglas combines geography, biography and adventure into a sweeping narrative of conflict, resilience and wonder across the most dramatic landscape on Earth.
'Magnificent... unlikely to be surpassed' Telegraph
'A magisterial account of the complex human history of the Himalaya' The Times
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Ed Douglas
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'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