Off The Bookshelf US -Books Touching the Void: The True Story of One Man's Miraculous Survival Touching the Void: The True Story of One Man's Miraculous Survival New & Used Touching the Void: The True Story of One Man's Miraculous Survival Books CDS DVD's Nusic Electronics

Search Books - select a category

Buy Touching the Void: The True Story of One Man's Miraculous Survival online at Discounted New and Used prices. Delivered to your door with Off-The-Bookshelf.

Touching the Void: The True Story of One Man's Miraculous Survival
by: Joe Simpson

List Price: $14.95

Off The Bookshelf's Price: $10.92

You Save: $4.03 (27%)
Prices subject to change.

Used Price: $0.99
Collectible Price: $14.95
Third Party New Price: $7.33

Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 796.522092
EAN: 9780060730550
ISBN: 0060730552
Label: Harper Paperbacks
Manufacturer: Harper Paperbacks
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 224
Publication Date: 2004-01
Publisher: Harper Paperbacks
Studio: Harper Paperbacks
Sales Rank: 37314

Related Items:

Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mt. Everest Disaster

Eiger Dreams: Ventures Among Men and Mountains

Editorial Review:

Product Description:

Joe Simpson and his climbing partner, Simon Yates, had just reached the top of a 21,000-foot peak in the Andes when disaster struck. Simpson plunged off the vertical face of an ice ledge, breaking his leg. In the hours that followed, darkness fell and a blizzard raged as Yates tried to lower his friend to safety. Finally, Yates was forced to cut the rope, moments before he would have been pulled to his own death.

The next three days were an impossibly grueling ordeal for both men. Yates, certain that Simpson was dead, returned to base camp consumed with grief and guilt over abandoning him. Miraculously, Simpson had survived the fall, but crippled, starving, and severely frostbitten was trapped in a deep crevasse. Summoning vast reserves of physical and spiritual strength, Simpson crawled over the cliffs and canyons of the Andes, reaching base camp hours before Yates had planned to leave.

How both men overcame the torments of those harrowing days is an epic tale of fear, suffering, and survival, and a poignant testament to unshakable courage and friendship.

Amazon.com Review:
Concise and yet packed with detail, Touching the Void, Joe Simpson's harrowing account of near-death in the Peruvian Andes, is a compact tour de force that wrestles with issues of bravery, friendship, physical endurance, the code of the mountains, and the will to live. Simpson dedicates the book to his climbing partner, Simon Yates, and to "those friends who have gone to the mountains and have not returned." What is it that compels certain individuals to willingly seek out the most inhospitable climate on earth? To risk their lives in an attempt to leave footprints where few or none have gone before? Simpson's vivid narrative of a dangerous climbing expedition will convince even the most die-hard couch potato that such pursuits fall within the realm of the sane. As the author struggles ever higher, readers learn of the mountain's awesome power, the beautiful--and sometimes deadly--sheets of blue glacial ice, and the accomplishment of a successful ascent. And then catastrophe: the second half of Touching the Void sees Simpson at his darkest moment. With a smashed, useless leg, he and his partner must struggle down a near-vertical face--and that's only the beginning of their troubles.

Customer Reviews

Average Rating: out of 5 stars

Rating:

- Good
Joe has a taut, spare style of writing. Perhaps the only negative one can point to is that he goes a little too much into techno-speak on mountaineering. However, this is forgivable since that was the audience he was writing for. That the book became a general public bestseller was a surprise. In a sense he writes sort of like Mickey Spillane- with spare descriptions, clipped, but not as taut as MS. But, there are some soaring moments of poetry- especially one scene where Joe describes looking out of the crevasse at stars at night in a dreamy poetic way that makes a very familiar scene seem new. He also has taken Simon's story, told to him since they were separated, and crafted a compelling counter-narrative that acts antiphonally with Joe's own tale. We get to parallax the whole tale, which ... Read More

Rating:

- One of those exceptions where the movie is better than the book
Joe Simpson's disastrous experiences climbing Siula Grande in 1985 make for one of the greatest true adventure stories of the twentieth century. After Joe's accident on the mountain, he and his climbing partner, Simon Yates, nearly achieved an unlikely descent. When Simon is unable to continue Joe's rescue, he does the unthinkable (which Joe does not blame him for), and Joe's hellish troubles begin.

Sounds like the outline for an exciting and heart-wrenching adventure, doesn't it? Unfortunately, Joe was not an experienced writer when he penned Touching the Void, his first book, and it clearly shows. The reader is often disoriented by Simpson's use of mountaineering jargon (e.g., cols, ridges, and gullies). And although the book provides a brief glossary, it's not easy to picture ... Read More

Rating:

- Exciting read
After watching the movie version of this book I wanted to read Touching the Void. I usually like to read the book first but in this case I am glad that I did it in reverse. I am not a mountain climber and do not know the terms used in the sport. So watching the movie helped set up the book to where it made a lot of sense. The book provided a more realistic vision of what the climbers thought and felt. It put me there with them. I am in awe.

Rating:

- Snore
This is a very boring book. I thought it would be an action packed survival book, but it put me to sleep.

Rating:

- Outstanding book - you won't be able to put it down
Touching the Void is one of the best books I've ever read. Wow. I am still kind of stunned. I started it way too late at night and couldn't put it down. I went to work the next morning with only four hours of sleep.

It's not even that the writing's good, per se. It is - it's VERY good. But the story itself and the way he wrote it is just amazing.

I've read a lot about the high altitude hallucinations people have (conversations with your feet at 27000 ft or people sitting on your ice ledge telling you they have tea set up just around the corner) but his experience was not at all like that. He had what he calls a voice inside that was insistent about keeping to a timetable and doing certain things, especially as he dragged himself off the glacier. It was deeply fascinating ... Read More

Books : Touching the Void: The True Story of One Man's Miraculous Survival