Hidaka

(Hardback)

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Description

Hidaka is a modern classic in Japanese literature and one of the best stories of mountaineering ever written. Based on a real-life tragedy in 1965, Wahei Tatematsu tells the story of a party of climbers on the Hidaka mountain range on Japan's northern island. In spite of weather warnings, six men attempt an ascent on the highest peak, Mount Poroshiri a fateful decision that costs all their lives as they are caught up in an avalanche. Miraculously, one climber, Odagiri, is known to have survived for four days after his companions had frozen to death. The reader enters the mind of Odagiri trapped in snow, half-frozen, half-asleep and revisiting his past as death slowly creeps upon him, telling his own story and that of an adventure gone wrong.

Author Bio

Wahei Tatematsu (1947-2010) won a major literary prize while still a student and was one of Japan's most renowned writers, Hidaka being by far his most famous work. He was also known for environmental work. Philip Gabriel is one of the major translators into English of the works of Haruki Murakami. His translations have appeared in Harper's, the New Yorker, and other publications. He has received the Sasakawa Prize for Japanese Literature, the Japan-U.S. Friendship Commission Prize for Translation of Japanese Literature, and the PEN/Book-of-the-Month Club Translation Prize. He is a professor and department head at the University of Arizona in Tucson, Arizona.