This is the first major history of the Himalayas: an epic story of peoples, cultures and adventures among the world’s highest mountains.
SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2020 DUFF COOPER PRIZE
An epic story of peoples, cultures and adventures among the world’s highest mountains: here Jesuit missionaries exchanged technologies with Tibetan Lamas, Mongol Khans employed Nepali craftsmen, and Armenian merchants exchanged musk and gold with Mughals.
Featuring scholars and tyrants, bandits and CIA agents, go-betweens and revolutionaries, Himalaya is a panoramic, character-driven history on the grandest but also the most human scale, by far the most comprehensive yet written, encompassing geology and genetics, botany and art, and bursting with stories of courage and resourcefulness.