Joe Simpson

An account of the ascent of the 21,000ft Siula Grande peak in the Peruvian Andes. Joe Simpson and his climbing partner, Simon Yates, had achieved the summit before the first disaster struck. What happened and how they dealt with the psychological traumas that resulted is the subject of this book.

Touching the Void

The author offers a personal interpretation of the values of mountaineering by describing his own climbing experiences and relating them to the Mt. Everest deaths of May 1996

Dark Shadows Falling

Brash and colorful, Simpson has never been more entertaining.

The Beckoning Silence

When mountain climber Simon Yates cut the rope and sent his friend and climbing partner Joe Simpson plummeting to an ordeal few mountaineers can have contemplated, the outcome was totally unpredictable. That Simpson survived his experience on Peru's Siula Grande 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. Next, another fall in the Himalaya crippled and almost broke him. 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 over the years he had been climbing, while he had survived so many events that should have meant certain death? In an attempt to find catharsis for his confused emotions he wrote this e xtraordinary memoir, revealing his early ife and his fifteen years of climbing on three continents, before and after the life-changing experience of Siula Grande. His gripping story recounts, with total honesty, experiences that range from hilarious to poignant to nearly unbelievable. Here are the signposts that have directed him since childhood to measure fear and embrace the unknown. He wonders about the luck or the choices along the way that have caused the loss of so many climbing friends: Ghosts everywhere I look, all Isee are ghosts - or perhaps I am the ghost, a spectre of my past, standing in the rubble of my present, anxiously awaiting the future. This is a compelling work of adventure and introspection that will hold both moutaineers and armchair travelers spellbound.

This Game of Ghosts

Dotknięcie pustki

Em junho de 1985, Joe Simpson e seu parceiro de escaladas, Simon Yates, chegam ao cume do Siula Grande, a 6300 metros de altura, nos Andes peruanos. A Face oeste da montanha nunca havia sido conquistada. LOgo depois da façanha, porém, os dois se assustam ao ver que a rota da volta é muito mais perigosa e traiçoeira do que haviam imaginado. JÁ no começo da descida, um desastre de consequências muito graves: Joe escorrega ao tentar desescalar uma parede de gelo e quebra a perna. Nas horas seguintes, cai a noite e uma tempestade de neve se fecha sobre eles enquanto Simon tenta desesperadamente descer o amigo com o auxílio de cordas. NUma das descidas mais aceleradas, castigado pela neve e por rajadas de vento, Joe fica suspenso no vazio, sobre uma imensa greta, sem conseguir tocar a parede de gelo e impossibilitado de tentar alguma manobra de salvamento. PAra não ser arrastado para o abismo, Simon é obrigado a cortar a corda que os une. Tocando o vazio é uma narrativa épica sobre medo, dor, resistência, coragem e amizade. O Livro recebeu vários prêmios, como o Boardman Tasker e o NCR e foi publicado em mais de dez línguas. FOi adaptado para o cinema por Kevin MacDonald, que recebeu o Oscar 2000 de melhor documentário por Um dia em setembro. "Um clássico do montanhismo... UM relato inigualável de dor e resistência." - Sunday Times "Simpson emociona profundamente a comunidade montanhista, que sabe do que ele está falando, e também o leitor comum, que é posto diante de situações jamais imaginadas de perigo extremo." - Los Angeles Times

a história real da miraculosa sobrevivência de um homem

Tocando o vazio

román

Zvuk zemské tíže

A thrilling new novel from the author of the mountaineering classic Touching the Void As her hand slips from his grip, Patrick's life is shattered, forever changed. Trapped high on a mountain face during the worst storm in living memory, a young man is forced to fight the brutal winter for his life--moments after his beloved wife is swept away forever across the ice. Haunted by grief and guilt, Patrick keeps vigil on the mountain for 25 years, in the hope that one day it will release his devastating secret.

The Sound of Gravity

Rodney Smith

Touching the Void, Class Set. Level 4 (A2/B1)

A sequel to the award-winning Touching the Void, in which Simpson 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 unknow

Předloha filmu Pád do ticha Kniha zaujme čtenáře od prvních stránek. Nejen proto, že jde o atraktivní tematiku, jakou bezesporu horolezectví je, ale i tím, jak sugestivně dokázal autor vylíčit sílu přátelství v mezní situaci a svoje pocity v boji o přežití při sestupu západní stěnou Siula Grande v Andách. Joe Simpson dokázal z hlediska vysokohorského horolezectví skoro nemožné. Se zlomenou nohou, opuštěný, obklopen ledovými stěnami, ovlivněn halucinacemi – hladový a žíznivý se doplazil do základního tábora. Spolu s ním prožíváme vteřinu za vteřinou jeho dilema – žít – vzdát se, žít – vzdát se, vzdát se – žít. Pevná vůle a odhodlání nevzdat se v podmínkách sebekrutějších dokázala, že život zvítězil. Četba tohoto zdánlivě prostého a neokázalého příběhu o hrdinství je povzbuzením pro každého člověka při překonávání překážek v jeho vlastním životě.

Setkání se smrtí

Căzând în gol

In Storms of SilenceJoe Simpson recalls the severe snowstorm which put an end to an attempt with four others on Gangchempo and the infection which forced him to abandon the climb on Cho Oyu in tibet. During that expedition he has a disturbing encounter with a party of political refugees and a 4-year-old boy fleeing across the Tibetan border. He becomes obsessed with stories of Chinese brutality in the old world Tibet they overran by force 40 years ago. He also begins to question the ethic of playing rich men's games in Third World countries, contributing little to the local people who endure a fearful struggle to survive. Oppression abroad makes him see mindless violence in his home town of Sheffield in a new light. The books ends with his first trip to the Andes in Peru since Touching the Void.

Storms of Silence

Joe Simpson has experienced a life filled with adventure but marred by death. He has endured the painful attrition of climbing friends in accidents, calling into question the perilously exhilarating activity to which he has devoted his life. Probability is inexorably closing in. The tragic loss of a close friend forces a momentous decision upon him. It is time to turn his back on the mountains that he has loved. Never more alive than when most at risk, he has come to see a last climb on the hooded, mile-high North Face of the Eiger as the cathartic finale. In a narrative which takes the reader through extreme experiences, from an avalanche in Bolivia, ice-climbing in the Alps and Colorado and paragliding in Spain - before his final confrontation with the Eiger - Simpson reveals the inner truth of climbing, exploring both the power of the mind and the frailties of the body. The subject of his new book is the siren song of fear and his struggle to come to terms with it.

In 1992, an Indian climber was left to die on the South Col of Mount Everest by other climbers who watched his feebly waving hand from their tent. He was filmed in his last hours for a television feature. Why did onlookers not hold the dying man's hand and comfort him? The answer appals Joe Simpson, who was himself left for dead in a cervasse in Peru in 1985 - 'because it might compromise their summit bid'. It is an ethical question that Joe is forced to confront as he climbs a hazardous route on Pumori. Now that Everest has become the playground of the rich, where commercial operators offer guided tours to the top, camping admist the detritus and unburied corpses of previous less fortunate climbers, Joe wonders if the noble instincts that once characterised mountaineering have been irrevocably displaced - as in politics, in business, in the media and in other facets of society.

Joe Simpson

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