An Eye At The Top Of The World wins 2007 Himalayan Literature Award
Oct 31, 09:50 PM | An Eye At The Top Of The World
An Eye At The Top Of The World has hit the bookstores and web. Last year it won the 2007 Kekoo Naoroji Memorial Himalayan Literature Award.
The Himalayan Club, based in New Delhi, awards the Kekoo Naoroji Award in association with Naoroji family and Godrej Industries for the best book on mountains of Himalaya published during the year. The award ceremony was held in Mumbai India on March 29, 2007.
FROM THE JUDGES:
“The year was rich in the quality of submissions including mountaineering anthologies by two different presidents of the Alpine Club. Resisting the temptations of these large format generalized classics, the jury cleaved to the guiding principle that the Award must be primarily Himalayan in its concerns. This allowed an outsider Tony Astill`s self-published book whose fulsome recreation of the 1935 Everest expedition from members diaries (remarkable for its untold story of more than twenty peaks climbed) to come from behind to enter the short list.
“The two leading contenders remained Peter Takeda`s thriller expose on the Nanda Devi nuclear caper and Durga Charan Kala`s biographical study of the legendary shikari “Raja” Wilson of Harsil, the details of whose life have till now remained unexplored. Both these contestants are in the nature of enquiries and represent hard won, time consuming research. Part of their virtue lies in the open ended nature of their findings which stimulates further enquiries. Together they have filled a yawning gap in our knowledge of what till now were semi-legendary Himalayan events and characters.
JURY VERDICT
“Well written with crisp authority on both scientific and mountaineering matters Peter Takeda’s AN EYE AT THE TOP OF THE WORLD is a survey of secret climbing expeditions to Uttarakhand in the 1960’s crafted with considerable skill. It combines in an expedition narrative the details of earlier clandestine climbs where American and Indian operatives placed and lost on Nanda Devi a nuclear powered spying device and replaced it with another (later recovered) on Nanda Kot. Radical in its concept, Takeda tracks down convincingly the planning and execution of this startling CIA operation, and has written a mountaineering thriller into the bargain. For years rumours have floated around the mountaineering fraternity and it is fascinating to have a good many of them confirmed though their sequence may have been mixed up. Despite being written for a lay American readership and from an American point of view, this a sensitive enquiry and the author`s feelings for the Nanda Devi region come across as both intimate and real. Bound to be controversial, the book’s sober tone guarantees its uncomfortable disclosures and their presumed fallout on the environment will find a lasting audience. The jury is unanimous in according joint first place to this compelling story.”
Jamie — Sep 1, 06:45 PM #
Congratulations on the site launch as well as the book. Well done.