Lincoln Hall

As I sat down to write this review, two news stories jostled for prominence on the ABC’s website. One was the unfolding story of two brothers who were trapped on Mt Cook, New Zealand’s highest mountain. Only one brother would come back (the other fell 500 metres to his death). Lincoln Hall would understand what the brothers went through. Hall is an Australian mountaineer who was, famously or infamously, left for dead at 8700 metres on Mt Everest. Having made the summit, Hall was heading back down with sherpas when he was struck down by an oedema, a brain malfunction caused by oxygen deprivation. His body gave out. Without a pulse or any sign of life, Hall was abandoned on a rocky ledge. (Ten days earlier, an English climber had been left to die on the mountain as others trekked past him. Hall was luckier, but both these events sparked condemnation, including from Sir Edmund Hillary.)

Set mostly in north-western Nepal during the early 1970s, Blood on the Lotus is a fictionalised account of the events leading up and consequent to the CIA’s withdrawal of support for the Kamphas, the Tibetan guerrilla army fighting the occupying Chinese.