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Storms of Silence
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 lies 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 bestselling book Touching the Void.
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 bestselling book Touching the Void.
304 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1996
21 people are currently reading
253 people want to read
About the author
Joe Simpson
39 books220 followers Joe Simpson is the author of the bestselling Touching the Void, as well as four subsequent non-fiction books published by The Mountaineers Books: This Game of Ghosts, Storms of Silence, Dark Shadows Falling, and The Beckoning Silence. The Beckoning Silence won the 2003 National Outdoor Book Award. The other three published by The Mountaineers Books were all shortlisted for the Boardman Tasker Award.
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Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews
February 12, 2026
What an interesting book !
The writer describe his different journeys around the world, specifically in Nepal and Peru, in a very engaging and interesting way, with a lot of self reflection.
In addition to the detailed summit bidding expeditions, he adds some important information about the history and politics of both china and Nepal, and also about the devastating 1970 avalanches that wiped the population of the town of Yungai (Peru).
All these are sewn together perfectly with the storyline.
A very unique and eye opening book, for readers interested in history, mountaineering, mysteries, politics and of course nature and travel writing.
The writer describe his different journeys around the world, specifically in Nepal and Peru, in a very engaging and interesting way, with a lot of self reflection.
In addition to the detailed summit bidding expeditions, he adds some important information about the history and politics of both china and Nepal, and also about the devastating 1970 avalanches that wiped the population of the town of Yungai (Peru).
All these are sewn together perfectly with the storyline.
A very unique and eye opening book, for readers interested in history, mountaineering, mysteries, politics and of course nature and travel writing.
March 19, 2025
Devastating account of Tibetan genocide
October 5, 2012
Too bad I took so long to get my hands on this as the books he suggests for further reading are not available on Kindle. Doesn't make me want to rush out and shake hands with a Chinese politician though !
July 19, 2021
It took me a while to get into this book. To be honest I'm not sure why, just I started reading it and didn't enjoy it, then I picked it up yesterday and for some reason I could not put it down. I do believe that some books are read at the right time, and I think maybe I started this book just a month too soon. Between beginning the book, and picking it up again yesterday, I read a book about the genocide in Cambodia - which features in this book, or rather the author considers it in this book. And its because of that I think I started to read it too early, as otherwise his considerations about the foibles and evils of mankind would have been far more abstract for me..
This is not a mountaineering book in the way any of the others I have read are. Yes the author attempts to climb some mountains during the pages, but the focus here is very internal - he considers whether it is right that those privileged enough to be able to climb, should do so - especially in areas of the world where they are amongst those who have no privilege. I found this to be really interesting in the end, whilst other authors have touched upon this to some extent (mainly around the use of Sherpa's) this is the first book I have really read about mountaineering that really points out the discrepancies between those doing the climbing and the myriad of other people who support them in doing so.
(Granted the author spoils most of this with some thoughts about women in gyms and how he can ogle them if he wants to, but if he doesn't want to its not his fault if he ends up doing it... which is utter BS but it did highlight to me how old this book is. First published in 1996 this book predates the current era of understanding and attempted equality, so I can, somewhat, understand why the author finds it acceptable to blame women for his lack of willpower but not how he struggles to accept/understand climbing in areas where the funds go towards corrupt regimes. I can understand it but I find it very hypocritical and automatically docked a star from the book because of that.)
I think the main takeaway though from the retrospective nature of this book is the 'machismo' on display. I'm not sure if there is a gender neutral word for this, but given the majority of the book deals with men in climbing (or men in dictatorships) I'm not going to look it up. But there is a definite sense of 'toughness' here, of defeat being a bad thing. I do think that knowing your limits is a strength, but here Simpson shows how even making the smart thing can make him doubt himself and once that happens the knock-on effect it has. I think it could be interesting re-reading some of the more personal mountaineering accounts and seeing if I can spot that same sense of machismo in them.
There are a couple of times when the author discusses the "third man" (though he does not name it as such), this has been mentioned in a previous book I read on climbing, and I find the idea of it to be really fascinating, scary, but fascinating. Potentially this might be a subject to explore in more detail as I move my reading on, but the main expansion I want to take away from this book is about Tibet. Having read a number of books on Everest I've suddenly realised my knowledge about the country is incredibly lacking, so I'll be looking to rectify that - maybe some of the books about climbing the North Face of Everest might help but also books on Tibet in general.
From reading a few other reviews this book is not as good as his earlier book "Touching the Void" - given that despite my opinion of the sexist machismo displayed I still really enjoyed this, I'm hopeful that I'll end up finding Void to be at least as equally as good.
This is not a mountaineering book in the way any of the others I have read are. Yes the author attempts to climb some mountains during the pages, but the focus here is very internal - he considers whether it is right that those privileged enough to be able to climb, should do so - especially in areas of the world where they are amongst those who have no privilege. I found this to be really interesting in the end, whilst other authors have touched upon this to some extent (mainly around the use of Sherpa's) this is the first book I have really read about mountaineering that really points out the discrepancies between those doing the climbing and the myriad of other people who support them in doing so.
(Granted the author spoils most of this with some thoughts about women in gyms and how he can ogle them if he wants to, but if he doesn't want to its not his fault if he ends up doing it... which is utter BS but it did highlight to me how old this book is. First published in 1996 this book predates the current era of understanding and attempted equality, so I can, somewhat, understand why the author finds it acceptable to blame women for his lack of willpower but not how he struggles to accept/understand climbing in areas where the funds go towards corrupt regimes. I can understand it but I find it very hypocritical and automatically docked a star from the book because of that.)
I think the main takeaway though from the retrospective nature of this book is the 'machismo' on display. I'm not sure if there is a gender neutral word for this, but given the majority of the book deals with men in climbing (or men in dictatorships) I'm not going to look it up. But there is a definite sense of 'toughness' here, of defeat being a bad thing. I do think that knowing your limits is a strength, but here Simpson shows how even making the smart thing can make him doubt himself and once that happens the knock-on effect it has. I think it could be interesting re-reading some of the more personal mountaineering accounts and seeing if I can spot that same sense of machismo in them.
There are a couple of times when the author discusses the "third man" (though he does not name it as such), this has been mentioned in a previous book I read on climbing, and I find the idea of it to be really fascinating, scary, but fascinating. Potentially this might be a subject to explore in more detail as I move my reading on, but the main expansion I want to take away from this book is about Tibet. Having read a number of books on Everest I've suddenly realised my knowledge about the country is incredibly lacking, so I'll be looking to rectify that - maybe some of the books about climbing the North Face of Everest might help but also books on Tibet in general.
From reading a few other reviews this book is not as good as his earlier book "Touching the Void" - given that despite my opinion of the sexist machismo displayed I still really enjoyed this, I'm hopeful that I'll end up finding Void to be at least as equally as good.
April 24, 2020
I always enjoy spending time with Joe Simpson’s acerbic wit and classically British stiff upper lip.
While Touching the Void was a masterpiece and The Beckoning Silence was a worthy book, I’m sorry to say Storms of Silence is so far the most forgettable of Mr. Simpson’s oeuvre.
There’s nothing particularly bad about it...there’s just not anything particularly good about it either. The style is fine, the stories are fine; it’s all fine.
However, there isn’t much meat on the bone. The anecdotal style serves him poorly here, weaving a book with a too threadbare plot and an anticlimactic finish.
Luckily, Mr. Simpson has written other books that tower far above this one.
While Touching the Void was a masterpiece and The Beckoning Silence was a worthy book, I’m sorry to say Storms of Silence is so far the most forgettable of Mr. Simpson’s oeuvre.
There’s nothing particularly bad about it...there’s just not anything particularly good about it either. The style is fine, the stories are fine; it’s all fine.
However, there isn’t much meat on the bone. The anecdotal style serves him poorly here, weaving a book with a too threadbare plot and an anticlimactic finish.
Luckily, Mr. Simpson has written other books that tower far above this one.
July 8, 2020
Some very interesting thoughts and stories but I'm not sure that the book as a whole has a purpose or conclusion. It did make me do research on some of the topics raised and so I've become more educated as a result but as a book I felt it was rather unsatisfying.
June 28, 2021
Joe Simpson gives great descriptions of the tension of mountain climbing, but does even better with his reflections on the social and political conditions of Tibet and Peru at the time of his visits (90s), and his personal contradictions.
July 12, 2021
Great book.
December 16, 2023
Less climbing, more politics but still good reading
June 20, 2025
Unexpected story about the human stupidity among nice views.
July 22, 2010
Reasonably well written, but really doesn't develop either as a 'mountaineering adventure' or as an alaysis of (male) aggression and becomes a bit political re. Tibet/China. Disappointing after '..Void'.
March 3, 2013
Goes without saying that this lacks the momentum of "touching the void", but for a book dealing more the mountaineer than the mountaineering this one is more thoughtful and interesting than a lot of the others. Well worth a read.
April 29, 2008
he's a good writer but it's kind of more of the same as usual.
November 12, 2008
A collection of thoughts and journeys, really. Less cohesive than Touching the Void. Interesting but not excellent.
July 5, 2013
excellent read. Thought provoking.
May 13, 2016
This book is not at the same calibre of the others Simpson has written.
Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews