Into Thin Air (Aria Sottile) by Jon Krakauer

Put this together with the feeling of muscular fatigue first and psychological fatigue after, and "the climb" becomes an experience more like...

Why "Aria Sottile" (thin air)? Anyone who has been in the high mountains knows the feeling well. The air grows rarefied and your breathing laboured.

Put this together with the feeling of muscular fatigue first and psychological fatigue after, and "the climb" becomes an experience more like a journey inside yourself... there where you can imagine the soul becoming thin and elusive like the air, like life itself, which at high altitude becomes fragile and evanescent...

A tragedy of our times...

Into Thin Air, the book that stirred up controversy in the worlds of mountaineering and journalism over one of the most controversial tragedies of our time. Krakauer is a journalist and starts at an advantage in writing the book... he writes in a continuous stream and the book seems to chase that terrible goal where 16 mountaineers lost their lives, among them Rob Hall and Scott Fischer (two very well-known mountaineers of world renown).

Who this book is for

Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer, published in Italy by Corbaccio as Aria Sottile, is a 347-page book with colour photos. It is neither a handbook nor a novel: it is the first-person account of a journalist who was there during the tragedy it tells, written with the pace of a reportage. For this reason it reads well even without any high-altitude experience, and to those who go to the mountains it offers concrete food for thought on a subject that concerns everyone: how much choices, judgement and the ability to turn back count when the summit seems close.

Those who enjoyed the author's style can carry on with Into the Wild (Nelle terre estreme); for another investigation into Everest we recommend Ghosts of Everest (Le ombre dell'Everest).