From Publishers Weekly
This latest Himalayan climbing tale could be subtitled "Homage to the Sherpas," for as Tenzing knows, no expedition has ever reached the summit of Everest without their aid. A former mountaineering guide himself, Tenzing retells some of the sport's most famous climbs, focusing on the career of his grandfather, Tenzing Norgay, "the most renowned of all Sherpas, Man of Everest, Tiger of the Snows," who made the first successful ascent of Mt. Everest with Sir Edmund Hillary in 1953. He also details his grandfather's later years, including the controversy about who actually reached the summit first (it was likely Hillary by a nose, Tenzing says) and the ambivalence Norgay felt about his sudden celebrity. But what distinguishes this book from the many others on Himalayan climbing is Tenzing's exploration of Sherpa society and history. Tenzing, who is married to an Australian (who collaborated on this book) and lives in Australia, is conflicted over the modern world's effects on the Sherpas. On the one hand, steady Himalayan tourism and the demand for Sherpa guides has been a "blessing" more jobs has meant more money and better living (a lower infant mortality rate, for example). On the other hand, Tenzing admits that the boost in climbing has led to environmental degradation and increased drug use among Sherpas. Even though his story is unlikely to climb the bestseller lists, it will appeal to the wide audience for survival books, as it tells familiar stories from a fresh point of view. Illus.
Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
From the Back Cover
At 11:30 a.m. on May 29, 1953, Tenzing Norgay and Edmund Hillary stood together on the summit of Everest. High in a clear, blue day with a gentle five-knot breeze, the two men stood above and apart from the rest of the world, wrapped in a private triumph. It was a moment too perfect to last. They hugged, Hillary took the famous photos, and they gazed in awe at the world's receding curve. But as they turned to descend, they could not appreciate the tide of human clamor that awaited them. Tenzing would later say that had he known what lay below, he might have stayed on the mountain forever.
The first ascent of Everest remains, fifty years later, one of the defining moments of twentieth-century exploration. But for Tenzing, the poor and illiterate Sherpa from a remote Nepalese village, it meant a wrenching displacement from an ancient way of life, almost untouched by two thousand years of history. Catapulted into the full glare of the twentieth-century spotlight, Tenzing received many honors and was feted by heads of state and captains of industry. Yet he was never comfortable with his celebrity. The realization of his private dream would change the way his own people saw themselves and would make the word "Sherpa" familiar around the world, even among those with little or no knowledge of the Himalaya or mountaineering. Yet the changes he would set in motion would, in the end, leave him behind. The road to the future he would build for his people would prove too long for one person to walk in a lifetime.
While no expedition to the top of Everest ever succeeded without the assistance of the legendary Sherpas, no book has told the story from the Sherpa perspective. Now, at last, Tenzing Norgay and the Sherpas of Everest sets the record straight. It is a frank, deeply felt telling of Tenzing's story as it has never been told before.
At the same time, as its title would suggest, it is also a fascinating account of the proud and enigmatic Sherpa culture and how it was forever changed by the Western obsession with the world's highest mountain. In writing it, Tashi and Judy Tenzing drew upon Tashi's unprecedented access to family members and to historic and personal photographs.
A fresh account of one of the greatest adventures of the twentieth-century, and a tribute to the Sherpa people, without whom the summit of Everest would not have been reached, Tenzing Norgay and the Sherpas of Everest is a long-overdue addition to the rich body of Everest lore.
"Tenzing Norgay and the Sherpas of Everest is both about my Sherpa people and for them. It is about those great old Sherpa climbers of the early days of Everest exploration who held no dreams of glory or summit success, but who climbed bravely and selflessly for decades to help others in their own quests. It is for the young Sherpas who today wear the laurels of Everest success as easily as any foreign climber. . . . It is written to remove the veil of anonymity they have worn for most of the last hundred years."--Tashi Tenzing
