Starry Nights
by Du??an Jelinčič
- original title: Zvezdnate noči
- climbing/travelogue/fiction
- first published in 1990; the present, revised edition published in 2006
- 288 pages
- sold to: Italy
- represented by Sanje
- numerous international awards: Vstajenje, ITAS Trento, Bancarella Sport, CONI, Acerbi.
Starry nights is a personal account of a Yugoslav Himalaya expedition in the 1980s. Concentrating on existential themes rather than ?conquered? peaks, it transcends the alpinist travelogue genre to bring it to the level of literature proper. Starry nights is thus an alpinist novel whose protagonists happen to be ?real? but which would lose none of its force if they were not.
If we climbers fail, it is always because of bad weather. I have rarely heard or read about an expedition failing because the climbers were not well prepared physically, because they had lost courage at the decisive moment, because they had been to impatient, had underrated the destination, had quarelled ... here is always one and only one reason for failure: bad weather.