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Paolo Cognetti marked his 40th birthday with a journey he had always wanted to make: to Dolpo, a remote Himalayan region where Nepal meets Tibet. He took with him two friends, a notebook, mules and guides, and a well-worn copy of The Snow Leopard. Written in 1978, Matthiessen's classic was also turning forty, and Cognetti set out to walk in the footsteps of the great adventurer.
Without Ever Reaching the Summit combines travel journal, secular pilgrimage, literary homage and sublime mountain writing in a short book for readers of Macfarlane, Rebanks and Cognetti's own bestseller, The Eight Mountains. An investigation into the author's physical limits, an ancient mountain culture, and the magnificence of nature, it is an awestruck love letter to one of the most spectacular places on earth.
Paolo Cognetti was born in 1978 in Milan. He divides his time between the city and his cabin 6,000 feet up in the Italian Alps. His international bestseller, The Eight Mountains, won Italy's Premio Strega and is now a major film. His other acclaimed titles include Without Ever Reaching the Summit: A Himalayan Journey, and The Lovers.
Stash Luczkiw is a US-born writer of poetry, fiction and journalism. He has translated various books from Italian and other languages into English.
"Fresh and completely engaging [...] [Cognetti] has a studied simplicity that is suggestive of a mountaineer's ascetic temperament and the writing also feels perfectly adjusted to the daunting character of Dolpo [...] [a] captivating travelogue"
– Mark Cocker, Spectator
"A breath of fresh air for mountain-lovers currently in confinement, this slim, elegant account follows Cognetti's trek through the remote Dolpo region of northwestern Nepal [...] The sparse, graceful prose [...] reflects the barren landscape and the author's joy in paring back the distractions of modern life – Tom Robbins"
– Financial Times, Books of the Year
