Tracy Chevalier: I would recommend giving prisoners Touching the Void by Joe Simpson.
Do not go and see "Touching the Void" if you suffer from a fear of heights.
"Touching the Void" tells the true story of a harrowing climb that has become part of mountaineering legend.
By Anthony Lane Do not go and see "Touching the Void" if you suffer from a fear of heights.
They're all thrillers of various kinds, as are Touching the Void and One Day in September, the tightly focused, feature-length documentaries that preceded them.
Touching the Void, the true story of two climbers and their perilous journey in the Peruvian Andes in 1985, garnered the Alexander Korda outstanding British film award.
I have held informal chats with colleagues on that balcony, my back glued with vertiginous fear to the wall furthest away from "touching the void".
The other thing that rescues and refines "The Queen" is one of the basic bonuses of moviegoing, more familiar of late from documentaries like "Touching the Void" and "Capturing the Friedmans": you come out arguing.
As another book about a mountain-climbing disaster, "Into Thin Air," by Jon Krakauer, scaled the best-seller lists, some readers wrote reviews noting the similarities of the two books and urging others to pick up "Touching the Void".
Still, even Touching the Void, Grizzly Man, Into the Wild and 127 Hours can leave you with the niggling feeling that they're not about epic adventures so much as glorified Outward Bound courses.
And in Kevin Macdonald's semi-dramatised documentary Touching the Void, Joe Simpson has to worm his way out of a crevasse and down the Siula Grande in Peru with a smashed leg.
