UKH

A long shot this, as Bookfinders and AbeBooks search engines have drawn a blank.

I'm trying to find a novel I once bought in the early '70s,  remaindered hardback, High St shop... I'm 90% sure the title was "Survive!", Blue dustjacket,  but I can't remember the author's name though I think it sounded European rather than Anglophone. Published before 1980... probably before '75 and I doubt it would have been reprinted..

It was framed around a climbing story with two men on an Alpine face somewhere, one gets hurt by a stonefall, partner leads to the top eventually. Interwoven with this there's some kind of sci-fi or metaphysical parallel story running through the book. I read it twice in my teens and couldn't make head nor tail of it! I suspect it isn't well known if at all, but somebody might have "the other copy"

I'm intrigued now more by not being able to find it to be honest, but I'd be interested to see what it was all about by reading it again. Or even just to find the author's name..

Does it ring any bells?

Yes, it rings huge bells with me. I'm sure I even had it once. I've just scanned my shelves without success. I'm about 80-90% certain that Toby Yates (Peter Yates' son) lent it/gave it to me in the early 80s, because his father was then thinking of making it into a movie, and he knew I was keen on climbing.

Is there a nuclear blast in it? Or is that some other book or a dream... Memory can be frustrating!

Thanks Gordon, that's fascinating. From what I remember it did already feel quite filmic (but may as one of those films you get to the end of and think, "What?!"   )

I'm hoping I was missing something that the intervening 40 years will have supplied....

Ahh... now you've got me. I can very vaguely remember the climbing story but I'm almost completely blank on the parallel bit. I want to say it was something prehistoric, or savage primitive, but my memory really isn't there with any confidence. That there was an interspliced and apparently unrelated story I'm sure, but not what it was...

No, definitely no nuclear blast in the thing I'm thinking of. It was fairly conventional in weaving quite a good thriller-cum-love story into a mountaineering context, iirc. And none of the climbing stuff quite rang true. V well researched, but he writer himself had probably done little more than a bit of moderate scrambling. But I don't really know, because it was so long ago and I can't really remember v much about it at all.

If you can lay your hands on  'One Step in the Clouds' an anthology of climbing fiction compiled by Audrey Salked and Rosie Smith and published by Diadem in 1990 it contains a fairly comprehensive  (20 odd tightly packed page of small print) bibliography. You may find something in that to jog your memory. I had a quick scan but nothing leapt off the page

I had just read through that Bibliography before I thought to post on here! But you're right, it's not on it.

Anything here? http://www.alpinejournal.org.uk/Contents/Contents_1980_files/AJ%201980%2012...

It wasn’t ‘The Climb Up To Hell’ was it?....Jack Olsen. 
About the Corti attempt on Eiger North Face?

The dust jacket is certainly substantially blue but I don't think that the rest of Basemetal's description really fits. It would be difficult to mistake it for a novel; it clearly chronicles an actual event - indeed quite a well-known one - which is rather backed up by a number of photographs of the main people involved together with various scenes from the rescue. The subject has elements of controversy and mystery, although the latter largely revolve around trying to work out the detail of what actually happened from Corti's somewhat vague account. At the time of writing there was a whiff of suspicion from some quarters of foul play, in part fuelled by the fact that two of the participants were still missing; this was effectively kicked into touch when their bodies were found on the descent route shortly before the book's publication in 1962. I think you'd struggle to find anything of a sci-fi or metaphysical dimension in it, or to get to the end without having understood what was going on.

That's not to say, of course, that some other author hasn't since used the episode as the basis for a work of fiction!

Thanks for that- a good read in itself! But not there.

In reply to Birdie Num Num:

As Ian says, the book I'm looking for us just fiction.

I suspect 'my' book wasn't a very big seller and wasn't by a very well known writer - apologies if this wasn't the  case, I might be underappreciating a book I didn't really get as a teenager! It does seem strange that it's hard to find any record of a hardback written in English and bought on the High Street though. Wish I'd simply kept it!

Sounds like an interesting read. If you ever manage to find out anymore please be sure to let us know the details.

Ta-ra. 

Come along people! I've never seen UKC fail yet...

Eiger wall of death?

http://search.bl.uk/primo_library/libweb/action/search.do?pag=bak&ct=&a...

Not that one (First published 1982) and not set on the Eiger, unfortunately...

Ah - maybe try that link though - it’s the BL bibliography search page

Thanks! Should it be exhaustive? The search engine seems to use odd filter options that throw up different results...

I'll spend some time in it!

No joy yet. I had it suggested to me that the title might have been changed if it was originally published overseas. Unfortunately that leaves searching without a title, author or publisher, and only a guess at publication date.My best hope seems to be if somebody remembers more about it or has a copy. I'll try posting on some of the 'lost book' forums and report back if I do find it. Thanks for all the help so far.