‘Climbing gives you the illusion of being in control, just for a while, the tantalising sense of being able to stay one move ahead of death’

As a child, Helen Mort was drawn to the thrill and risk of climbing, the tension between human and rockface, and the climber’s need to be hyperaware of the sensory world – to feel the texture of rock under their fingers, how their crampons bite into the ice, the subtle shifts in weather. But when she becomes a mother for the first time, she finds herself re-examining this most elemental of disciplines, and the way that we view women who put themselves in danger.

Written by one of Britain’s most talented young writers, A Line Above the Sky melds memoir and nature writing to create what will surely become a classic of the genre; it asks why humans are compelled to climb and poses other, deeper questions about self, motherhood and freedom. It is a love letter to losing oneself in physicality, whether that in the risk of climbing a granite wall solo, without ropes, or the intensity of bringing a child into the world.