Asia's Lindbergh

TIGER OF THE SNOWS (294 pp.)--The Autobiography of Tenzing of Everest, written in collaboration with James Ramsey Ullman--Putnam ($4.50).

This is the success story of the onetime yakherder who, with New Zealander Edmund Hillary, walked to greater heights than any man before. Tenzing had won the chance to climb Everest by being the gamest and surest of the bellows-chested Sherpa tribesmen who lugged packs for sahibs scrambling up Himalayan peaks. But people were not sure of his nationality, or even how to spell his name. Today, this Nepal-born mountaineer is a sort of Asian Lindbergh, hailed by millions in the East as a heroic symbol of their true capabilities, and worshiped by many as the Lord Buddha reincarnated. He owns a race horse and receives the public at a smart new house on a hillside in Darjeeling, India. For the ghosting of an autobiography he cannot read he commands the services of one of the most practiced and high-priced writers in the mountaineering business. James Ramsey Ullman (The White Tower, The Age of Mountaineering) has filled Tenzing's book with plenty of good writing, cliff hangs, avalanches, frostbite and windy nights on bald mountains. The result is polished, often deeply moving, but rather on the twicetold side. Tenzing, however, has saved for this book one bit of information he has never hitherto confirmed: "Hillary stepped on top first."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.