Tigers of the Snow was one possibly recommended by Rebecca, as there are two of this name. I bought the paperback of the external view, rather than Tenzing Sherpa’s memoirs.
The Light Eaters was a review copy from Netgalley and the publishers. Thank you to Netgalley and all the publishers who have sent me ARCs during the year. Most have been great!
Tigers of the Snow
by Jonathan Neale
Tigers of the Snow is true story of the tragedy and survival on one of the world’s most dangerous mountains.
In 1922 Himalayan climbers were British gentlemen, and their Sherpa and Tibetan porters were “coolies,” unskilled and inexperienced casual laborers. By 1953 Sherpa Tenzing Norgay stood on the summit of Everest, and the coolies had become the “Tigers of the Snow.”
Jonathan Neale’s absorbing book is both a compelling history of the oft-forgotten heroes of mountaineering and a gripping account of the expedition that transformed the Sherpas into climbing legends. In 1934 a German-led team set off to climb the Himalayan peak of Nanga Parbat, the ninth highest mountain on earth. After a disastrous assault in 1895, no attempt had been made to conquer the mountain for thirty-nine years. The new Nazi government was determined to prove German physical superiority to the rest of the world. A heavily funded expedition was under pressure to deliver results. Like all climbers of the time, they did not really understand what altitude did to the human body. When a hurricane hit the leading party just short of the summit, the strongest German climbers headed down and left the weaker Germans and the Sherpas to die on the ridge. What happened in the next few days of death and fear changed forever how the Sherpa climbers thought of themselves. From that point on, they knew they were the decent and responsible people of the mountain.
Jonathan Neale interviewed many old Sherpa men and women, including Ang Tsering, the last man off Nanga Parbat alive in 1934. Impeccably researched and superbly written, Tigers of the Snow is the compelling narrative of a climb gone wrong, set against the mountaineering history of the early twentieth century, the haunting background of German politics in the 1930s, and the hardship and passion of life in the Sherpa valleys. (Goodreads)
My Review
This lovingly research book takes us back to mountaineering, and specifically Himalayan mountains, in the first half of the 20th century. Those were strange times, when if you hadn’t been to the ‘right’ schools and the top universities, you just weren’t the right type to mountaineer. They were right in a way; you couldn’t afford to. And it wasn’t just Britain. Germany had just the same elitist approach, tangled up with Naziism and Arianism, but just as elitist.
Jonathan Neale examines the evidence and tells the story of many of these attempts to climb Everest and the other peaks, using contemporary records, diaries of the foreigners, and interviews with the Sherpas who climbed, opened up routes, carried up massive loads of equipment (often more than once on a given day), and were fed on poor rations to keep them going.
Mr Neale has a suitable background for all this. Of British parents working in India, he was sent to the best local school, rather than back to England to board. He thus ended up speaking several Indian languages, and getting on well with the locals. He also was picked with two others to spend a year at the mountaineering school, so gained amazing insight into the work put in by the Sherpas and other tribes involved with the mountaineering industry.
Tigers of the Snow more than lives up to its blurb. It is engrossing, detailed, atmospheric, scary and ire-raising. I couldn’t help but draw parallels with the stories here of 1930s in India, and my father’s memoirs of 1930s Africa. The treatment of the highly skilled Sherpa and other porters by inexperienced climbers was little short of slavery, and some died who should have returned. And I now have a much better understanding of altitude sickness.
The author gives exactly enough historical background to bring you into the changing times. I especially noted his explanation of Hitler’s rise to power. All too relevant for today, I fear. I did find the latter part a little repetitive, when he examined the German expedition from a different set of sources, but in the end, it was a thorough analysis, and made sense of the shape of Himalayan expeditions now.
And, having been been brought up in the ‘tragic hero’ era of British exploration, I no longer think of George Mallory as a hero. I realised my mistake with Scott of the Antarctic a long time ago. And Mallory was just another.
The Light Eaters
by Zoë Schlanger
Award-winning environment and science reporter Zoë Schlanger delivers a groundbreaking work of popular science that probes the hidden world of the plant kingdom and reveals the astonishing capabilities of the green life all around us. It takes tremendous biological creativity to be a plant. To survive and thrive while rooted in a single spot, plants have adapted ingenious methods of survival. In recent years, scientists have learned about their ability to communicate, recognize their kin and behave socially, hear sounds, morph their bodies to blend into their surroundings, store useful memories that inform their life cycle, and trick animals into behaving to their benefit, to name just a few remarkable talents.
The Light Eaters is a deep immersion into the drama of green life and the complexity of this wild and awe-inspiring world that challenges our very understanding of agency, consciousness, and intelligence. In looking closely, we see that plants, rather than imitate human intelligence, have perhaps formed a parallel system. What is intelligent life if not a vine that grows leaves to blend into the shrub on which it climbs, a flower that shapes its bloom to fit exactly the beak of its pollinator, a pea seedling that can hear water flowing and make its way toward it? Zoë Schlanger takes us across the globe, digging into her own memories and into the soil with the scientists who have spent their waking days studying these amazing entities up close.
What can we learn about life on Earth from the living things that thrive, adapt, consume, and accommodate simultaneously? More important, what do we owe these life forms once we come to understand their rich and varied abilities? Examining the latest epiphanies in botanical research, Schlanger spotlights the intellectual struggles among the researchers conceiving a wholly new view of their subject, offering a glimpse of a field in turmoil as plant scientists debate the tenets of ongoing discoveries and how they influence our understanding of what a plant is.
We need plants to survive. But what do they need us for—if at all? An eye-opening and informative look at the ecosystem we live in, this book challenges us to rethink the role of plants—and our own place—in the natural world. (Goodreads)
My Review
The blurb for the Light Eaters is excellent. It really gives a full synopsis of the book, and enables you to see the dilemma facing scientists when they are attempting to describe the function of certain plant characteristics without using terms that to many scientists are reserved entirely for human biology. Brain, for example. Communication. Memory. Warning other plants.
Schlanger’s background in climate science journalism means she can tackle complex subjects in highly descriptive language. Sometime I found her style too ornate, especially when describing habitats, but she would move on to explain the findings of her botanists’ subjects in great detail, and mostly understandably, if I put my brain to work. But she had a habit of making some really banal statements just after your brain had been locked into thinking mode. It was also apparent, especially in the chapters based on chemistry and electricity, that the botanists were having the same trouble as each other, following the same patterns of research, and risking their careers. It felt repetitive.
Eventually I felt Schlanger fell into her own trap, dismissing ‘accepted’ parallels in other sciences, when she could have asked if they too had been constrained by language in their findings. This is a very deep book, which I eventually got bored with. I might dip into it again. Then again, I might not.
This book sounds like a great tribute to the fortitude of the Sherpas. A medical student of mine took a year off to live in Tibet and became adept at leading mountain treks. He once carried a Sherpa who had severed altitude sickness down a mountain on his back, slept outside a village with him to keep him warm (they close villages at night fall) and then saw to his medical treatment. The young man is a brilliant and caring doctor.
Great reviews. Yes, I was the one who tipped you off to the book on the Sherpas–I read it while trekking the Everest region, with a similar reaction as you had. I had a greatly increased respect for Sir Edmond Hillary, however–who of course, being a Kiwi, himself wasn’t quite quite.