The Snow Leopard

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
This article is about the fact-based first-person book. For the recording by Shearwater, see
The Snow Leopard (EP). For the animal, see snow leopard. For the Italian historical novel, see The Leopard
.
The Snow Leopard
LC Class
QH193.H5 M37 1978

The Snow Leopard is a 1978 book by

Himalaya
.

Content

The book recounts the journey of Matthiessen and Schaller in 1973 to Shey Gompa in the inner Dolpo region of Nepal. Schaller's original objective was to compare the mating habits of the Himalayan blue sheep (the bharal) with those of the common sheep of the USA, while for Matthiessen the trip was more of a spiritual exploration. Another aim was to spot the snow leopard, a predator on the bharal and a creature that was seldom seen (it had been glimpsed only twice by Westerners in the previous twenty five years). A third part of the plan was to visit the Crystal Monastery and its Buddhist lama.[1]

The travel aspect of the work is in the tradition of writing by

Heart Sutra, that 'form is emptiness and emptiness is form'—the Void, the emptiness of blue-black space, contained in everything."[3]

Matthiessen frequently digresses to remember his wife Deborah Love who had died of cancer prior to the adventure.[4] The book is, therefore, also a meditation upon death, suffering, loss, memory and healing. The memories of Deborah operate with a number of other recursive stylistic traits that play against the linear, outward progress of the journey logged through maps and dates.[5]

Questions of absence and presence play in tandem with the wider question of gaining peace through an acceptance of how the world is rather than desiring phenomena to arise that do not exist.

Awards and acclaim

The Snow Leopard won the 1979 National Book Award in the category Contemporary Thought[6] and the 1980 National Book Award for Nonfiction (paperback).[7] It has garnered more critical acclaim since then.[8] It has been included in several lists of best travel books including World Hum's ten most celebrated books,[9] Washington Post Book World's Travel Books That Will Take You Far,[10] and National Geographic Traveler's Around the World in 80+ Books.[11]

References

  1. ISBN 978-1136745652
    . Retrieved 21 June 2014.
  2. ^ "Snow Leopard". enotes. Retrieved 21 June 2014.
  3. ISBN 978-0547549194
    . Retrieved 21 June 2014.
  4. ^ "The Snow Leopard". University of Tennessee at Martin. Retrieved 21 June 2014.
  5. ISBN 0198036949
    . Retrieved 21 June 2014.
  6. ^ "National Book Awards – 1979". National Book Foundation. Retrieved 2012-02-21.
  7. ^ "National Book Awards – 1980". National Book Foundation. Retrieved 2012-02-21.
    Some dual awards for hardcover and paperback books were conferred from 1980 to 1983, when both Fiction and Nonfiction were also subdivided in other ways.
  8. ^ Powell's Books — The Snow Leopard (Penguin Nature Classics)
  9. ^ ten most celebrated books
  10. ^ Travel Books That Will Take You Far
  11. ^ Around the World in 80+ Books Archived October 16, 2008, at the Wayback Machine

External links

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=The_Snow_Leopard&oldid=1201222291"