Buried In The Sky

Winner of the National Outdoor Book Award and the Banff Mountain Book Award for Mountain Literature "Gripping, intense…Buried in the Sky will satisfy anyone who loved [Into Thin Air]." —Kate Tuttle, Boston Globe When eleven climbers died on K2 in 2008, two Sherpas survived. Their astonishing tale became the stuff of mountaineering legend. This white-knuckle adventure follows the Sherpas from their remote villages in Nepal to the peak of the world’s most dangerous mountain, recounting one of the most dramatic disasters in alpine history from a fascinating new perspective. Winner of the NCTE George Orwell Award and an official selection of the American Alpine Club Book Club.

Set both in the present and in the dust-laden reaches of Angola in 1976, Buried in the Sky is an album of stories about men and women and war. To the strains of the music of Bob Dylan and in long periods of boredom and inactivity, South Africa's soldiers tried to make sense of a war they could not see. Rick Andrew, himself a conscript at that time, allows his comrades to tell their stories. We get to know Manie Dippenaar, whose hunting trip threatened to turn into an international incident; Private Smith, the boy from the Bluff who had Love and Hate tattooed on his knuckles and chose a novel way to roast a chicken as his means of revenge on a bad tempered major; Morphine Sister, who handled a gun like a mamba; and Spek, the surfer-boy who dreamed only of catching the next big wave. Poignant, funny and dramatic, Buried in the Sky will strike a chord with anyone whose life has been tarnished by war and especially those who found themselves on 'the border'.

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Sample Book Insights: #1 Chhiring’s first name, Cheerful, was a reflection of his determination. He was always cheerful, and his clients praised his attitude. He was always moving fast, and he couldn’t control the pace. Speed was hardwired into his DNA. #2 The Sherpa people of Rolwaling Valley are a small ethnicity that inhabit Beding and the other villages of the Rolwaling Valley. They rarely describe themselves this way, preferring to recognize what they have: faith and a self-reliant community. #3 The legend of Guru Rinpoche and the demons of Rolwaling is a scare tactic used to get visitors to visit the valley more often. The younger generation is less concerned with the apocalypse. #4 Rolwaling was a beyul, a frontier community that granted amnesty to refugees. It was thought to be guarded by a powerful mountain goddess. The Sherpa people relied on local materials and their own labor to feed and clothe themselves.

Winner of the National Outdoor Book Award and the Banff Mountain Book Award for Mountain Literature "Gripping, intense…Buried in the Sky will satisfy anyone who loved [Into Thin Air]." —Kate Tuttle, Boston Globe When eleven climbers died on K2 in 2008, two Sherpas survived. Their astonishing tale became the stuff of mountaineering legend. This white-knuckle adventure follows the Sherpas from their remote villages in Nepal to the peak of the world’s most dangerous mountain, recounting one of the most dramatic disasters in alpine history from a fascinating new perspective. Winner of the NCTE George Orwell Award and an official selection of the American Alpine Club Book Club.

The people of the Zend don't bury their dead, nor do they burn them. What they do instead is build towers... When a lonely corpse bearer sees soldiers on the horizon, he knows his ancient way of life is over. His country is about to fall victim to an empire on the rise. An empire with a terrible, secret power...

Starting with the viral poem “Crossing Half of China to Fuck You,” Yu Xiuhua’s raw collection in Fiona Sze-Lorrain's translation chronicles her life as a disabled, divorced, single mother in rural China. Yu Xiuhua was born with cerebral palsy in Hengdian village in the Hubei Province, in central China. Unable to attend college, travel, or work the land with her parents, Yu remained home where she could help with housework. Eventually she was forced into an arranged marriage that became abusive. She divorced her husband and moved back in with her parents, taking her son with her. In defiance of the stigma attached to her disability, her status as a divorced single mother, and as a peasant in rural China, Yu found her voice in poetry. Starting in the late 90’s, her writing became a vehicle with which to explore and share her reflections on homesickness, family and ancestry, the reality of disability in the context of a body’s urges and desires. Then, Yu's poem “Crossing Half of China to Fuck You” blew open the doors on the patriarchal and traditionalist world of contemporary Chinese poetry. She became an internet sensation, finding a devoted following among young readers who enthusiastically welcomed her fresh, bold, confessional voice into the literary canon. Thematically organized, Yu’s essays and poems are in conversation with each other around subjects that include love, nostalgia, mortality, the natural world and writing itself.

This book describes and analyses the structure and performance of Tibetan Buddhist death rituals, and situates that performance within the wider context of Buddhist death practices generally. Drawing on a detailed and systematic comparative survey of existing records of Tibetan funerary practices, including historical travel accounts, anthropological and ethnographic literature, Tibetan texts and academic studies, it demonstrates that there is no standard form of funeral in Tibetan Buddhism, although certain elements are common. The structure of the book follows the twin trajectories of benefiting the deceased and protecting survivors; in the process, it reveals a rich and complex panoply of activities, some handled by religious professionals and others by lay persons. This information is examined to identify similarities and differences in practices, and the degree to which Tibetan Buddhist funeral practices are consistent with the mortuary rituals of other forms of Buddhism. A number of elements in these death rites which at first appear to be unique to Tibetan Buddhism may only be ‘Tibetan’ in their surface characteristics, while having roots in practices which pre-date the transmission of Buddhism to Tibet. Filling a gap in the existing literature on Tibetan Buddhism, this book poses research challenges that will engage future scholars in the field of Buddhism, Tibetan Buddhism and Anthropology.