Michelle Paver

Author of Thin Air

This month’s featured author, Michelle Paver, talks with Reader’s Digest about her new ghost thriller, Thin Air. It’s 1935, and a young doctor, Stephen Pearce, joins a team of British mountaineers in the Himalayas. But the mountains are not the real danger.

Michelle Paver was headed on a different trajectory to writing. “I was a lawyer and utterly miserable, but I stuck at it for a few years,” she says. “At last, I realised that I had to give writing a shot – if I failed, at least I’d have tried.” That was nearly 20 years ago and her decision has paid off.

RD: Are you a mountain climber? Paver: I’ll come clean, I’m NOT a mountaineer! However I have hiked in the Andes, Norway and the Rockies. To research Thin Air, I trekked with a small group of hikers, porters and dzos (a yak-cow cross) into the foothills of Kangchenjunga, where the story is set. We followed the same route as the 1930s expeditions on which I’ve based Stephen’s, trekking from an altitude of about 1800 metres to over 4500 metres. That trek was crucial. I couldn’t have evoked the steamy malarial jungle, or the savagery of a snowstorm, if I hadn’t experienced them myself. Particularly that snowstorm. After hours of hail, thunder and lightning, I woke in my tent to darkness and silence. Moments later, I heard footsteps crunching through the snow. I realised then just how terrified Stephen would be, trapped in his tent with only a thin layer of frozen canvas between him and what haunts the mountain.

RD: Can you tell us about the period in which the book is set? Paver: The 1920s and ’30s were the golden age of mountaineering, with vast expeditions manned by hundreds of porters and led by heroes such as

Mallory and Irvine.

You’ll find the condensed version of Thin Air in the latest release of Reader’s Digest Select Editions. Phone 0800 400 060 and quote code 17SNNMC to purchase your copy.