“On the surface, it’s a rip-roaring yarn. Underneath, The Rope Dancer is an intriguing journey through the ideas of Friedrich Nietzsche and a modern re-telling of his great and confounding work, Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Unlike many commentators who focus on his nihilism, Leach’s interpretation of Nietzsche is at heart life affirming and passionate. Mountaineering in The Rope Dancer serves as a powerful metaphor for Nietzsche’s central message – that to live fully, we must live dangerously.”

Dr Ann McCulloch, author of Dance of the Nomad

The phone call came at the end of a cold Melbourne winter. I was thirty-six – the same age at which my father died, an event for which I've struggled to forgive myself – and in that winter of 1999 I was at the lowest point in my vitality ever.

The ringing was like an alarm bell in my cold, quiet room. No one had called for a long time. I'd forgotten to put the answering machine on and I looked at the phone with dismay, wondering . . .

On the eleventh ring I picked up the receiver.

One short phone call can change your whole life. From Melbourne’s back streets and the Wimmera wheat-fields, The Rope Dancer takes you on a compelling journey into the heart of Central Asia’s Tien Shan, or Celestial Mountains. “The Rope Dancer, is a rare kind of a book: funny, disturbing, sexy and wise.”