London, 1996, 1st UK edition. 304 pp, color photos. 'Joe Simpson wrestles with the perplexing nature of aggression and violence - their eruption in himself, in others, in societies, in nature, and their evil consequences in cruelty, warfare and genocide. Aspects of the theme are exposed as he brings up to date in the vivid anecdotal style of 'This Game of Ghosts', his thoughtful, funny and moving account of his maverick life as a mountaineer.
Simpson's fourth book is much more complex than Touching The Void, as he examines the themes of aggression and violence. He describes several expeditions to the Himalaya and Andes, his successes and continued adventures, and makes keen observations of the situations in Peru, Tibet and elsewhere. DJ, Fine.
In Storms of Silence Joe Simpson brings up to date, in the vivid anecdotal style of This Game of Ghosts, his thoughtful, funny and moving account of his maverick life as a mountaineer. But behind the rich tapestry of adventures likes a dark and brooding disquiet.He recalls the terrifying avalanche that nearly wiped out his base camp during an attempt on the unclimbed north face of Gangchempo in the Himalaya.
While climbing on Cho Oyo he meets a band of Khampas, including a four-year-old boy, fleeing over the high Nangpa La pass from the brutality of Chinese oppression in Tibet. Joe's love of Himalayan life contrasts with the ruthless Chinese destruction of the Tibetan culture and people. A violent brush with a skinhead in his home town of Sheffield is mirrored in his chilling encounter with the Peruvian police. On Huascaran, Peru's highest mountain, he hears unnerving ghostly voices and learns of the earthquake which buried 18,000 people and wiped out the town of Yungay below him. It reminds him of his boyhood visit to the Nazi concentration camp at Belsen. The book ends with the trauma of reliving, in quite unexpected circumstances, the dance with death he described so vividly in his best-selling book Touching the Void.
