The Snow Leopard is an heraldic book, full of ghosts, demons and unfamiliar mythologies; a well-veiled, lower-case buddhist text set in the virtual top of the world, the Himalayas…. Like all good books it is about death, and the imminence of death is fresh and lively, if you will, because we are drawn hypnotically along into a landscape where neither the beasts nor men are familiar….

Peter Matthiessen must be our most eccentric major writer; his eccentricities are those of thought, not language. His style is not exotic and owns a studied Brahmin grace and wit, though the wit is rather more discomfiting than funny. He writes cleanly and beautifully….

Running concurrent to the outward journey in The Snow Leopard is an equally torturous inward journey, and the two are balanced to the extent that neither overwhelms the other. Matthiessen for the first time becomes utterly candid about...