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Booker Prize-winning Novelist Keri Hulme Dead at 74

Novelist Keri Hulme, second from right, poses with Spiral Publishing collective members Miriama Evans, left, Marian Evans and Irihapeti Ramsden, right, in Wellington, New Zealand on July 16, 1984. Hulme, the New Zealander whose 1984 novel The Bone People won the Man Booker Prize died on Monday, Dec. 27, 2021. She was 74. (NZME via AP)
Novelist Keri Hulme, second from right, poses with Spiral Publishing collective members Miriama Evans, left, Marian Evans and Irihapeti Ramsden, right, in Wellington, New Zealand on July 16, 1984. Hulme, the New Zealander whose 1984 novel The Bone People won the Man Booker Prize died on Monday, Dec. 27, 2021. She was 74. (NZME via AP)
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Booker Prize-winning Novelist Keri Hulme Dead at 74

Novelist Keri Hulme, second from right, poses with Spiral Publishing collective members Miriama Evans, left, Marian Evans and Irihapeti Ramsden, right, in Wellington, New Zealand on July 16, 1984. Hulme, the New Zealander whose 1984 novel The Bone People won the Man Booker Prize died on Monday, Dec. 27, 2021. She was 74. (NZME via AP)
Novelist Keri Hulme, second from right, poses with Spiral Publishing collective members Miriama Evans, left, Marian Evans and Irihapeti Ramsden, right, in Wellington, New Zealand on July 16, 1984. Hulme, the New Zealander whose 1984 novel The Bone People won the Man Booker Prize died on Monday, Dec. 27, 2021. She was 74. (NZME via AP)

Keri Hulme, the New Zealander whose 1984 novel The Bone People won the Man Booker Prize, has died. She was 74.

Family members confirmed Hulme died Monday morning at Waimate on New Zealand´s South Island. They did not specify a cause.

Hulme worked as a tobacco picker, dropped out of law school and was a charity worker before becoming an unusual literary star when The Bone People, her first novel, won one of fiction´s greatest prizes.

The novel was rejected by several publishers before being picked up by the obscure publisher Spiral, a New Zealand feminist collective.

According to The Associated Press, Hulme took almost 20 years to produce The Bone People which drew on her indigenous Maori and Scottish heritage, weaving themes of personal and cultural isolation. She later shunned the spotlight.

"There were stories of her being this literary giant," Hulme´s nephew Matthew Salmons told the New Zealand news website Stuff. "It wasn´t really something that she discussed.

"It was never about fame for her. She´s always been a storyteller. It was never about the glitz and glam(or), she just had stories to share."

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Nepal Sharply Hikes Permit Fee for Everest Climbers 

Mount Everest, the world highest peak, and other peaks of the Himalayan range are seen through an aircraft window during a mountain flight from Kathmandu, Nepal January 15, 2020. (Reuters) 
Mount Everest, the world highest peak, and other peaks of the Himalayan range are seen through an aircraft window during a mountain flight from Kathmandu, Nepal January 15, 2020. (Reuters) 
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Nepal Sharply Hikes Permit Fee for Everest Climbers 

Mount Everest, the world highest peak, and other peaks of the Himalayan range are seen through an aircraft window during a mountain flight from Kathmandu, Nepal January 15, 2020. (Reuters) 
Mount Everest, the world highest peak, and other peaks of the Himalayan range are seen through an aircraft window during a mountain flight from Kathmandu, Nepal January 15, 2020. (Reuters) 

Nepal will increase the permit fees for climbing Mount Everest by more than 35%, making the world’s tallest peak more expensive for mountaineers for the first time in nearly a decade, officials said on Wednesday.

Income from permit fees and other spending by foreign climbers is a key source of revenue and employment for the cash-strapped nation, home to eight of the world’s 14 highest mountains, including Mount Everest.

A permit to climb the 8,849 meter (29,032 feet) Mount Everest will cost $15,000, said Narayan Prasad Regmi, director general of the Department of Tourism, announcing a 36% rise in the $11,000 fee that has been in place for nearly a decade.

"The royalty (permit fees) had not been reviewed for a long time. We have updated them now," Regmi told Reuters.

The new rate will come into effect from September and apply for the popular climbing April-May season along the standard South East Ridge, or South Col route, pioneered by New Zealander Sir Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay in 1953.

Fees for the less popular September-November season and the rarely climbed December-February season will also increase by 36%, to $7,500 and $3,750 respectively.

Some expedition organizers said the increase, under discussion since last year, was unlikely to discourage climbers. About 300 permits are issued each year for Everest.

"We expected this hike in permit fees," said Lukas Furtenbach of Austria-based expedition organizer, Furtenbach Adventures.

He said it was an "understandable step" from the government of Nepal. "I am sure the additional funds will be somehow used to protect the environment and improve safety on Everest," Furtenbach said.

Regmi did not say what the extra revenue would be used for.

Hundreds of climbers try to scale Mount Everest and several other Himalayan peaks every year.

Nepal is often criticized by mountaineering experts for allowing too many climbers on Everest and doing little to keep it clean or to ensure climbers' safety.

Regmi said cleaning campaigns were organized to collect garbage and rope fixing as well as other safety measures were undertaken regularly.

Climbers returning from Everest say the mountain is becoming increasingly dry and rocky with less snow or other precipitation, which experts say could be due to global warming or other environmental changes.