Product Description

This Game of Ghosts by Joe Simpson, is a heartfelt description of one of Joe's most trecherous treks to the Himalayas. This Game of Ghosts describes the trip that almost broke and crippled Joe Simpson, and will have you so enthralled you won't want to put the book down.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #13550 in Books
• Brand: Cordee Books
• Published on: 1994-08-25
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 336 pages

Features

• Paperback

About the Author
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. Since its first publication in 1988, 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.

Customer Reviews

An excellent read
I really enjoyed this book - you really get to know Simpson, and he comes across as a likeable character, although somewhat hapless and accident prone, not to mention easily led (by Greenpeace, for example). Having read, and loved, Touching the Void, I was astonished to discover that the incident in Peru was just one of many extremely close scrapes that Simpson got into, including being swept 2,000 feet down a mountain in an avalanche. This man has considerably more than nine lives. He also makes some admirable efforts to explain why he climbs, and how he deals with the regular deaths of his friends in the mountains. The regularity with which these introspective passages pop up within the text demonstrates that Simpson is turning the issue over in his own mind as much as he is trying to get anything across to us armchair mountaineers. But one or two of these passages stand out among the best in all mountaineering literature. And if you get bored of these bits, a thrilling passage of mountaineering and survival is never too far off. A very entertaining book, and definitely worth reading for anyone who enjoyed Touching the Void (and much better than Dark Shadows Falling).

Had to read the sequel to Touching the Void
After having enjoyed Touching the Void a book that claimed to be its sequel was worth a read. Slow in starting, I did not initially understood why Simpson needed to tell us about his childhood, the book gave a good undestanding of Simpson and his addiction to mountaineering. The desciption of the mugging in Sheffield was just as dramatic as the accident on Pumouri. Simpson has that great ability to enanble his reader to visualise what he is going through. The description of the ankle break and the facial injuries was not one for the screamish and i felt "not again". Simpson's account of the loss of his friends and the wonder of why them and not me is sobering. Amother great offering from Simpson and I would recommend this to all that have read Touching the Void.

what happened next...
This game of ghosts is a valiant attempt by joe simpson to write a sequel to the epic "touching the void", and his honesty and philosophical approach are interesting, but ultimately the book is disjointed and a little repetitive and strangely lacking. upon finishing touching the void, i couldnt wait to find out what happened next, and unfortunately simpson doesnt really linger on this period in any great depth, and there seems to be some reading between the lines required as well, as nowhere is there mention of simon yates contributions to touching the void, other than obviously cutting the rope.
simpson attempts to knit togther the various segments of his life with his motivations and observations on risk and particuliarly mountaineering, but these observations become a little repetitive.
simpson is undoubtedly a good writer, and the mountaineering expeditions he describes again show his simplistic yet effective technique works very well, but lacking the depth and coherence of the previous book.