The 4th Himalayan Club Kekoo Naoroji Memorial Award
2008-09 |
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Two new jurors Rifka Israel and Rama Goyal were appointed to fill the vacancies created by the retirement of Suman Dubey and Rukun Advani.
Seven entries were received in a cluster in September and of these five were from a single publishing house.
Every one of the entries had some striking merit whether in literary style, quality of production or originality of climbing philosophy. Two of the entries carried no Himalayan content and sadly despite their virtues could not satisfy the Award criteria. Two other entries of a non-climbing genre were unfortunate to find themselves competing against a quartet of brilliantly described big wall campaigns. In any other year any of these four books might have won. However the front runner was never in dispute.
CITATION FOR WINNING ENTRY
McDonald, Bernadette: TOMAZ HUMAR (Hutchinson, London)
This is a truly remarkable account of an extraordinary climber brilliantly portrayed by Bernadette McDonald. Despite the author's admiration for her controversial subject, she presents the facts, the emotions, the analysis, all with impeccable clarity and objectivity.
The book draws the reader into the world and mind of this charismatic individual where everything seems to hang together. Tomaz lives and breathes climbing, especially in the Himalaya where passion and inner strength unite in an exultant harmony with the life force he forever chooses to sorely tempt. Here we have a rare mountainteer unique in understanding that climbing can be a means to explore an inner dimension beyond sporting achievement, enabling him to experience the sovereignty of the human spirit. Tomaz may well prove to be the sport's first true mystic who discovered that climbing has the miraculous potential to yield the ultimate peak of selfhood.
The stubborn courage Tomaz displays in defending his right to be true to himself is sensitively handled and much of his career is about weathering the storms created by reactions to his individualism as about big wall contests against unrelenting weather. What emerges is a mahatma-like character who sticks doggedly to his convictions and in doing so liberates the sport from the pointlessness of its summit fixation.
The device of combining episodes of the Rupal Face rescue with flashbacks to a chronological account within each chapter create the sensation of witnessing a thrilling serial. The gut wrenching snatch of Tomar from certain death by heroic helicopter pilots makes a palpitating climax to an epic outing.
The book's breathtaking descriptions of climbs, perceptive insights into the climber's mind, and strong narrative make it a most satisfying adventure-biography. Despite being pitted against three other masterpieces all three jurors agree this book stands in an inspirational class of its own and emphatically deserves to win the fourth The Himalayan Club Kekoo Naoroji Book Award.
This is for the second successive year that Bernadette McDonald has won this Book Award. Last year she won it for her book BROTHERHOOD OF ROPE.
The award will be presented to the author at a ceremony at Mumbai on 15th February 2009, in presence of H R A (Tony) Streather, former President of the Alpine Club.
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