Collected short stories - Dermot Somers

'No one will die in this story. That is a promise, as if I controlled events, pen slicing and splicing ropes at will.' Dermot Somers' short stories have attracted international acclaim. His collection 'At the Rising of the Moon' won the Boardman Tasker Prize for Mountain Literature in 1994 and was awarded the Banff Mountain Book Festival's Literature and Culture Prize. This collection brings together 23 of Somer's tales.
Somers is recognised as one of the finest and most original writers in the mountaineering and travel milieu. He has travelled widely and is an accomplished climber. Though rooted in his native Irish culture, his experiences in the Alps and the Himalaya work their way into his literature, along with themes of legend and myth, the undercurrent of politics and religion and the under pinner of adult life and relationships.
Whilst mountains act as a central metaphor for many of his stories, Somers is equally concerned with their effect on the dynamics of human relationships. His narratives draw on the energy from both, the energy that crams a lifetime of sensation into seconds of experience and which makes his stories so compelling.

Born in 1947 in Tremane, Dermot Somers is an Irish mountaineer, explorer, writer and broadcaster. He worked as teacher before leaving education to write and travel full time. He started climbing at the relatively late age of 27, yet became one of the leading Irish rock climbers, establishing significant new routes in areas such as Fairhead and Muckross Head. He became the first Irish man to climb the six great North faces of the Alps, and participated in expeditions to the Himalaya and the Andes. As well as his award winning books, he has also written and presented television and radio programmes on mountaineering and exploration.

'Somers is a craftsman, and interweaves his themes beautifully throughout. Great writing, calm, authoritative and completely satisfying.' (Geoff Dutton, Climber Magazine). 'Faced with the choice of freezing to death or torching my collection of climbing books to stay warm I would read Mountains and Other Ghosts while the others cheerfully burned.' (Will Gadd, Rock and Ice Magazine).