Mount Everest, and all it means to royalty, explorers, imperialists, and two sherpas, perched on a cliffside, waiting for a man on the ledge below to move.

A British climber has fallen from a cliffside in Nepal, and lies inert on a ledge below. Two sherpas kneel at the edge, stand, exchange the odd word, waiting for him to move, to make a decision, to descend. In those minutes, the world opens up to Kathmandu, a sun-bleached beach town on another continent, and the pages of Julius Caesar. Mountaineering, colonialism, obligation-in Sebastian Martinez Daniell's effortless prose each breath is crystalline, and the whole world is visible from here.

About the Author

Sebastian Martinez Daniell was born in Buenos Aires in 1971. He has published three novels, Semana (Week, 2004), Precipitaciones aisladas (Isolated Showers, 2010) and Dos Sherpas (Two Sherpas, 2018). His work has also been included in anthologies such as Buenos Aires / Escala 1:1 (2007), Uno a uno (2008), Hablar de mi (2010) and Golpes . Relatos y memorias de la dictadura (2016). He is one of the co-founders of the independent publisher Entropia and is a literature lecturer at the National University of the Arts in Buenos Aires.

Jennifer Croft won a 2022 Guggenheim Fellowship for her novel The Extinction of Irena Rey , the 2020 William Saroyan International Prize for Writing for her illustrated memoir Homesick and the 2018 International Booker Prize for her translation from Polish of Nobel laureate Olga Tokarczuk's Flights. She holds an MFA from the University of Iowa and a PhD from Northwestern University and is a Presidential Professor at the University of Tulsa.

Reviews

"Daniell reveals a fascinating universe in scintillating prose, precisely translated by Croft....It's a stunner." -Publishers Weekly, starred review

"An ambitiously inventive, profoundly intelligent trek through highly personal experiences of lingering imperialism." -Kirkus, starred review

"Brilliantly tangential...this book becomes a viewpoint from which we can see the whole world." -The Observer

"Daniell uses a neat cast of characters, a sprinkling of sub-tales and a touch of comedy to create a story far broader than the reader might expect, an acerbic dissection of a tired world order and personal history of two very different individuals." -Lunate

"Two Sherpas is sheer brilliance, a book that had me hooked in anticipation from its opening pages. It's a wake up call." -Word by Word

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Praise for Sebastian Martinez Daniell

"Daniell reveals a fascinating universe in scintillating prose, precisely translated by Croft....It's a stunner." -Publishers Weekly, starred review

"An ambitiously inventive, profoundly intelligent trek through highly personal experiences of lingering imperialism." -Kirkus, starred review

"Brilliantly tangential...this book becomes a viewpoint from which we can see the whole world." -The Observer

Book Information
ISBN 9781913867416
Author Sebastian Martinez Daniell
Format Paperback
Page Count 271
Imprint Charco Press
Publisher Charco Press