Touching The Void

The best-selling, nail-biting, heart-breaking non-fiction classic of adventure.

A brilliant, vivd, gripping, heart-stopping account of their terrifying adventure... Superbly written

One of the absolute classics of mountaineering...a document of psychological, even philosophical witness of the rarest compulsion

On every level it is an outstanding literary achievement

A quite extraordinary and moving book...Touching the Void touches the Great Questions in an understated yet utterly compelling way

A truly astonishing account of suffering and fortitude...the narrative acquires an irresistible force, carrying all before it

A brilliant, vivid, gripping, heart-stopping account of their terrifying adventure... Superbly written

One of the absolute classics of mountaineering...a document of psychological, even philosophical witness of the rarest compulsion'

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 two novels, The Water People and The Sound of Gravity.

Touching the Void is the heart-stopping account of Joe Simpson's terrifying adventure in the Peruvian Andes. He and his climbing partner, Simon, reached the summit of the remote Siula Grande in June 1995. A few days later, Simon staggered into Base Camp, exhausted and frost-bitten, with news that that Joe was dead. 
 
What happened to Joe, and how the pair dealt with the psychological traumas that resulted when Simon was forced into the appalling decision to cut the rope, makes not only an epic of survival but a compelling testament of friendship.

Storms of Silence

'To mix a metaphor, Joe Simpson is a streetwise mountaineer...He takes you close to the nitty-gritty, the nuts and bolts of professional climbing in the 1990's. He is used to dealing with totalitarian policemen. He is passionate and moving on the subject of Tibet and the agonies inflicted on it by the cruel Chinese occupation...Above all, Simpson is a born writer'

'The book's major theme is the nature of aggression. A skinhead in a Sheffield bar sets the reader up for the genocide that is modern Tibetan history...What makes Joe Simpson stand out is his belief that there is more to life than a crampon, and his dogged refusal to leave the highest mental peaks unclimbed'

'THis immensely accessible book offers a unique re-interpretation of masculinity...In doing so, it offers a ray of hope to an increasingly bleak and vicious society'

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. Touching the Void has become a classic and an international bestseller, translated into fourteen languages and made into an award-winning feature-length documentary film (winner of the Outstanding British Film of the Year BAFTA 2004). Joe currently lives in Sheffield.

In Storms of Silence Joe 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.

The Beckoning Silence

'Eloquent, spine-chilling stuff' Sunday Times

Grippingly told...there is no question Simpson is a brilliant adventure writer. There are passages that had my heart racing

No one conjures the thrill of altitude better than Simpson...A hugely enjoyable book...As far as mountaineering literature goes this is about as good as it gets

An engrossing read. Nobody evokes the physical and psychological realities of climbing better...a powerfully written book...as vivid as anything Simpson has yet produced

Heart-stopping stuff...This is not a book for the fainthearted and perhaps should come with a government health warning...a book that will have your fingers clutching imaginary rocks and palms sweating over every page

Joe Simpson is the author of several bestselling 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.

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.

Dark Shadows Falling

Joe Simpson has become a legend, not only among mountaineers, but to thousands who would shun his dangerous lifestyle but have been inspired by his honesty and courage.

Simpson writes better on the darker side of mountaineering than any man alive

His concern is that the strong ethics and selfless instincts that have characterised mountaineering in the past are being eroded by modern-day ambition, selfishness and greed

Simpson is an elegant stylist and as usual his prose is laced with humour

An astonishing first chapter describes thoughts and feeling of a mountaineer slowly dying on Everest, while other climbers relax in a tent a few feet away. They know he is dying but ignore his feeble wave. Simpson is horrified that such selfishness should gradually invade the mountaineering fantasy

Joe Simpson is the author of several bestselling 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, The Beckoning Silence and two novels: The Water People and The Sound of Gravity.

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.

This Game Of Ghosts

The extraordinary sequel to the bestselling classic Touching the Void

Simpson has a great way with words and his prose grips... A fascinating tale, wonderfully told

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

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

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

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

This is a remarkable book by a remarkably lucky individual a homage to a breed of men and women who to the rest of us may appear to be touched by lunacy, but who are forever questing, forever valiant

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.

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.

Joe Simpson

The mountain and its ferocious weather are brilliantly described

Another gripping mountaineering epic, but also much more than that, a fine, poetically written meditation on love, loss and redemption

The familiar Simpsonian territory of guilt, survival and loss against a background of elemental terror and beauty

The tale is deftly woven with an air of immediacy and a visceral, intimate feel, drawing heavily on Simpson's mountaineering experiences

As her hand slips from his grip, Patrick's life is shattered, forever changed... 
 
Trapped high on a high 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.

Joe Simpson

Praise for The Sound of Gravity

The mountain and its ferocious weather are brilliantly described

Another gripping mountaineering epic, but also much more than that, a fine, poetically written meditation on love, loss and redemption

The familiar Simpsonian territory of guilt, survival and loss against a background of elemental terror and beauty

The mountain and its ferocious weather are brilliantly described

Another gripping mountaineering epic, but also much more than that, a fine, poetically written meditation on love, loss and redemption

The familiar Simpsonian territory of guilt, survival and loss against a background of elemental terror and beauty

The mountain and its ferocious weather are brilliantly described

Another gripping mountaineering epic, but also much more than that, a fine, poetically written meditation on love, loss and redemption

The familiar Simpsonian territory of guilt, survival and loss against a background of elemental terror and beauty

Books by Joe Simpson

Follow penguin

Follow ladybird

Follow puffin

Sign up to the Penguin newsletter