Summit

Summit - a novel. In the autumn of 1938 Germany's Reichsführer, Heinrich Himmler, is growing frustrated at the British using their regional power in India to block passage of an SS expedition to Tibet. Determined to spite them, he plots to steal something the British hold dear and have failed for the seventh time that spring to achieve - a first summit of Mount Everest. Seventy years later, seasoned mountain guide Neil Quinn's ninth visit to the top of the world's highest mountain in the charge of the sixteen-year old son of a Long Island billionaire begins to unravel. As a desperate fight for their lives begins in the freezing air high above Tibet, Quinn stumbles across a clue to a story that questions everything he thinks he knows about the great mountain. When the bitter aftermath of Quinn's disastrous climb turns to violent tragedy in Kathmandu, his discovery pushes him into a relentless journey that takes him from the dangerous heights of Everest to the equally treacherous margins of a new Europe where history hungers to repeat itself. Amidst a rich and diverse cast of characters, each with their own reason to possess the mystery of his discovery, Neil Quinn has to fight, increasingly desperately, for order and the truth. In doing so, he reveals an older story of man and mountain to its shocking conclusion.

Harry Farthing is an English writer who lives in Charleston, South Carolina. A fellow of the British Royal Geographical Society, he has travelled extensively visiting extreme environments such as the Sahara Desert, the Amazon and the Arctic North. As a mountaineer he has climbed Mt Blanc and the Matterhorn in the Alps, Kilimanjaro in Tanzania, Mt McKinley (Denali) in Alaska, and Shishapangma and Mount Everest in the Himalaya. In 2011 he made a solo journey across continental North America by motorcycle that linked the Atlantic, Arctic and Pacific Oceans and travelled 2,000 miles of unpaved roads above the 60th Parallel. As a writer, he is interested in archaeology and world history, particularly the twentieth century, and inspired by the writings of Bruce Chatwin, Ted Simon, Laurie Lee, Antony Beevor, and James Ellroy, as well as the cinematic works of Martin Scorsese and Quentin Tarantino, amongst others. In his debut novel, Summit, he marries his knowledge of mountaineering, world travel and history to tell an exciting action-adventure story.