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Everest: Summit of AchievementBy Stephen VenablesLustre PressPrice: Rs 1975Phew. Another attack of anniversary-itis will soon be past, and m...

Everest: Summit of Achievement
By Stephen Venables
Lustre Press
Price: Rs 1975

Phew. Another attack of anniversary-itis will soon be past, and mountaineering enthusiasts can once again pursue their passion without being irritated away from the peaks by the frenzied celebrations to mark Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay8217;s feat 50 years ago. This offering from the Royal Geographical Society is a feast. Accompanying essays by Reinhold Messner, Stephen Venables, John Keay and Ed Douglas are photographs capturing the mountain8217;s past and present. Among the expeditions documented, with photographs of telegrams and notes, is the Mallory-Irvine foray. And then there is the code formulated by John now Jan Morris to enable him to transmit news of the ascent to the Times. 8220;Snow condition bad hence expedition abandoned advance base on 29th and awaiting improvement being all well,8221; went the radio despatch from the Indian mission in Nepal. It meant: Everest climbed, May 29, Tenzing, nobody killed or injured.

Self
By Yann Martel
Faber 038; Faber
Price: pound;4.99

Oh, the joys of being a Booker Prize recipient! Not only does the book in question get a second certain shot at bestsellerdom, your earlier ignored work gets reprinted and positioned prominently on the bookshelves. After the surprising success of The Life of Pi, it8217;s Canadian writer Yann Martel8217;s chance to cartwheel in the sunshine. And why not. Self, his experimental novel from 1996, is certainly worth a read.

Caterpillar in the Salad
By Arvind Bhandari
Independent
Price: Rs 495

Introducing his remembrances of his long stint in journalism and domestic cricket 8212; and the interesting people he encountered 8212; Arvind Bhandari makes a rather audacious claim: that autobiographies do not tell more than 75 per cent of the truth. His says his book, in contrast, encapsulates 90 per cent of the truth. Oh well, that claim must remain unverified for now. But while touring through his life thus far, he also manages to throw in opinions on a range of issues, including on how to solve the Kashmir imbroglio.

Moebius Trip
By Giti Thadani
Penguin India
Price Rs 250

Architectural history, mythology and iconography are not up everyone8217;s alley. But in Thadani8217;s account all of this and more make for captivating reading. More so because she is talking about sites and sculptures that one doesn8217;t read about in ordinary travel books. But it is a narrative about things destroyed. The term Moebius refers to a kind of facial paralysis that doesn8217;t allow one to have expressions. And all of Thadani8217;s figurines suffer from the moebius syndrome. Thadani takes the reader to the ruins of Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat and the south. She muses over the grandeur of civilisations that produced such wonders and is pithily dismissive of patriarchal forces that have allowed the desecration of such sites.

And along the road less

travelled are encounters with people who help her, whether it is to change tyres or look for lost sites that no one seems to have heard of.