Christopher Nicholson’s AMONG THE SUMMER SNOWS, a contemplative journey to discover the last snows in the Scottish Highlands, has been longlisted for the 2017 Highland Book Prize. AMONG THE SUMMER SNOWS, published by September Publishing in 2017, was also one of six books shortlisted for the Boardman Tasker Award for Mountain Literature last year. The judging panel described the book as ‘lyrical and elegaic’.
The Highland Book Prize is an annual prize established in 2017 to promote high quality published works that recognise the Highlands for its strong cultural heritage and its magnificent landscape. Presented by the Highland Society of London and facilitated by Moniack Mhor Writers’ Centre, the prize aims to bring recognition to literature created in or about the Highlands, and is open to fiction, non-fiction and poetry.
The shortlist will be announced in April. The winner will be revealed in May at the Ullapool Book Festival and will receive £1000 and a writing retreat at Moniack Mhor.
As the summer draws to a close, a few snow beds – some as big as icebergs – survive in the Scottish Highlands. Christopher Nicholson's AMONG THE SUMMER SNOWS is both a celebration of these great, icy relics and an intensely personal meditation on their significance. A book to delight all those interested in mountains and snow, full of vivid description and anecdote, it explores the meanings of nature, beauty and mortality in the twenty-first century. Chris Townsend of Outdoors Magazine describes it as ‘Superb’ and ‘Destined to be come a classic of mountain literature.’
Christopher Nicholson is the author of three novels, including THE ELEPHANT KEEPER (Fourth Estate, 2009), shortlisted for the Costa Prize in 2009. In 2011 the novel was adapted for BBC Radio 4 and shortlisted for the Encore Award. His novel WINTER, about Thomas Hardy’s later life and the young actress who became his last muse, was published in 2014 by Fourth Estate and dramatized for BBC Radio as TESS IN WINTER. He has lived near Shaftesbury in Dorset for the past thirty years.
AMONG THE SUMMER SNOWS was selected by The Telegraph as one of the best Christmas books for armchair travellers in December.
Visit Christopher’s website or follow him on Twitter.
Praise for AMONG THE SUMMER SNOWS:
‘Destined to become a classic of mountain literature. Superb.’ – Chris Townsend, Outdoors
‘Lyrical and elegaic, this debut is a tender account of an unusual fascination with the remaining snows of the Scottish Highlands. Nicholson offers us a wry, self-aware take on the relationship between humans and the changed (and changing) natural world.’ – Boardman Tasker
‘It’s a long while since I read a book that made me laugh and cry within just a few pages … A wrong-footing marvel of a book … touching both death’s void, and love, and the beauty of the natural world at one and the same time and in a way that is all the more powerful for its restraint.’ – Books from Scotland
‘A beautiful book about love and loss, fragility and chance, the wide world and the near world . . . full of intense light and colour, extraordinary glimpses, moving insights and subtle humour.' – Richard Kerridge, author of Cold Blood
‘This is a startlingly beautiful book… There’s a sense of quiet resilience and hope throughout, the renewal of life even in the blinding awareness of one’s own fragility…AMONG THE SUMMER SNOWS is at once haunting, moving, silent, and profoundly beautiful. An essential read for chionophiles and lovers of good landscape and nature writing.’ – Alex Roddie, The Great Outdoors
‘A glorious little book, beautifully produced’ – Michael Kerr, The Telegraph, The best Christmas books for armchair travellers