When he disappeared near the summit of Mount Everest in 1924, George Mallory was instantly elevated to the pantheon of British heroes. The greatest climber of his generation, Mallory was also a friend of Rupert Brooke, Virginia Woolf and Robert Graves; he moved in cultural circles at the heart of critical reassessments of the Old Empire. This novel rewrites the life and myth of George Mallory, finding him alive on the upper slopes of Everest. Insisting he killed his younger climbing companion, Mallory is secretly taken back to Britain where he lives in silence for another 22 years. The narrator of the novel becomes caught up in stories about Mallory, truth and fantasy, and he becomes ensnared in the vagaries of historical truths.