Publisher's Synopsis
This is the story of London journalist Harold Cleaver, who abruptly walks away from his life to hide in the mountains of the South Tyrol. Overweight and overwrought, Cleaver abandons home, partner, mistresses and, above all, television - the instrument that brought him identity and power. He flies to Milan and heads deep into the South Tyrol. His quest: to climb above the 'noise line', to get beyond the interminable clamour of the public voice, of which he himself was such a master. Weeks later, snowed in at 5000 feet, harangued by voices from the past and humiliated by his inability to understand the Tyrolese peasants he relies on for food and whisky, Cleaver discovers that there is nowhere so noisy and dangerous as the solitary mind...
