La Montagna Nuda

Nanga Parbat, my brother, death and loneliness. Nanga Parbat, or the Naked Mountain, is 8125 meters high and has been the holy grail of the best mountaineers for decades. In the 1930s the great Willy Merkl attempted the climb and died. His half-brother, Karl Herrligkoffer, was obsessed with it and attempted several times to "conquer" the mountain in his brother's name. In 1970 he planned an expedition in which the Messner brothers participated, with the intention of reaching the top from the Rupal side, a wall of glacier and rock that plunges into the void for more than 4500 metres. Reinhold and Gunther Messner are the first to climb that route but, fearing bad weather, they decide to descend along the opposite side, the Diamir, following an unknown route: Gunther will lose his life when hit by an avalanche. The tragic memories will never abandon Reinhold who, after thirty years, decides to tell his version of events and launches serious accusations against the members of the expedition of which he and his brother were part. But what really happened in the death zone, that zone in which every movement and every thought take on forms and logics incomprehensible to those who have never been there? For mountaineering lovers; for those who seek to understand the passion for the extreme; for those interested in the controversy that has always surrounded the tragedy and for all those who want to see the human side of a myth, the best and most controversial book by the greatest living mountaineer.