Surely one of the most beautiful travel books ever written, Matthiessen's account of a trek across the empty spaces of Tibet is also a meditation on Zen Buddhism and its quest for the meaning of existence. It is almost twenty years since The Snow Leopard was first published, but the text is still so fresh that the ink might still be wet on the page, and reading it is a calming, yet eyeopening, experience. All that Buddhist philosophising may irk some readers, but the argument is cogently handled and his observation of life at the roof of the world, though unquestionably highly romanticised, is expressed in extraordinarily luminous prose. As for his descriptions of the natural world, they are voluptuous: "In the glory of sunrise, spider-webs glitter and greenfinches in October gold bound from pine to shining pine . . ." A.W.