About the book
‘Here we drink three cups of tea to do business; the first you are a stranger, the second you become a friend, and the third, you join our family, and for our family we are prepared to do anything – even die’ – Haji Ali, Korphe Village Chief, Karakoram mountains, Pakistan. In 1993, after a terrifying and disastrous attempt to climb K2, a mountaineer called Greg Mortenson drifted, cold and dehydrated, into an impoverished Pakistan village in the Karakoram Mountains. Moved by the inhabitants’ kindness, he promised to return and build a school. “Three Cups of Tea” is the story of that promise and its extraordinary outcome. Over the next decade Mortenson built not just one but fifty-five schools – especially for girls – in remote villages across the forbidding and breathtaking landscape of Pakistan and Afghanistan, just as the Taliban rose to power. His story is at once a riveting adventure and a testament to the power of the humanitarian spirit.
Reviewed by Ringwood Reading Group:
Really divided the group
Star rating: **+
Hampshire Libraries 
Review by Hawkley Reading Group:
We nearly all found the writing style awkward and leaden – in need of a good copy editor. Maybe half of us had heard of Greg Mortenson and the ‘scandal’ before reading the book, and this generated an interesting discussion re how that affected one’s reaction to the writing and to the book in general. How ‘true’ was the book? To what extent did this matter? One of us held out for a higher score because she thought the book inspirational regardless, the marjority condemned it for it’s literary values.
Star rating: **
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