FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

TENZING: HERO OF EVEREST
First Full-length Biography of Sherpa Tenzing Norgay

WASHINGTON (Jan. 30, 2003)—Marking the 50th anniversary of the first ascent of Mount Everest, National Geographic Books is publishing the first full-length biography of Tenzing Norgay, the Tibetan-born Sherpa who conquered the world's highest peak with Sir Edmund Hillary in May 1953.

TENZING: HERO OF EVEREST (National Geographic Books, ISBN 0-7922-6983-7, March 2003, $25), by writer and mountaineer Ed Douglas, reveals for the first time Tenzing's story of courage, tragedy and ambition. His is the tale of a man who overcame incredible odds to climb out of obscurity, let alone to the top of the world.

Son of an itinerant yak herder, Tenzing was born in 1914 in a remote, sacred Tibetan valley in the shadow of Everest. As a young child he was placed in a monastery, where his parents hoped he would become a lama. Unsuited to cloistered life, however, he ran back to his family and started work as a farmhand, yak herder and young climbing porter.

Douglas' account details Tenzing's journey from these humble beginnings to the tragedy of his first marriage, the years of hardship and poverty living with his second wife and two daughters in a one-roomed shack, to the crowning glory of his career, when, as leader of the Sherpas on the 1953 British Everest expedition, he and Hillary became the first two people to reach the summit.

In her introduction to the book, writer Jan Morris, who met Tenzing 50 years ago when she was covering the historic Everest ascent as a journalist with the Times (of London), describes Tenzing as a man who became "a prince among the Sherpas, a star and a cynosure" through force of personality, extreme professionalism and an exceptional responsiveness to the world at large.

"He rode above the petty jealousies, personal, political, and national, which fell upon him the minute he returned from Everest, and seemed to face the world with a grand serenity. Nobody had known anyone quite like him before. Wherever he went in those years of blazing celebrity, he was treated as a fabulous being in himself - like some marvelous unicorn, perhaps, or an elegant creature of the snows. I dare say there will never be quite such a phenomenon again," she writes.

Fame brought him security and comparative wealth, but also new challenges. His family affairs grew complex. As he aged, his fame began to fade and so did his confidence. In his final years, he faced sorrow, depression and isolation before his death in Darjeeling in 1986.

Douglas draws on interviews with family members, climbing partners and members of the Sherpa community in Darjeeling and Nepal to recount Tenzing's background, his rise to fame and the aftermath of his triumph in this gripping account of a man who made his people famous and whose life was the stuff of legend.

Douglas, a writer and journalist living in Sheffield, England, is the editor of Alpine Journal, the oldest mountaineering publication in the world. His previous books include "Regions of the Heart," co-authored with David Rose, and "Chomolungma Sings the Blues." A mountaineer for more than two decades, he has climbed in the Himalaya, Alaska, Africa and Southeast Asia.

CONTACT: Alison Reeves
+1 202 857 7793
areeves@ngs.org