The entire 4,000-kilometre Sino-Indian boundary is disputed. In 1962, the two countries fought a short and vicious war that went badly for India, and from which Nehru never recovered. The border, called the Line of Actual Control, is not marked on any map agreed upon by the two sides; it runs through the largely unpopulated and inhospitable high mountains of the Himalayas. From the 1990s, as Beijing and New Delhi sought to resolve their seemingly intractable border dispute, an elaborate system of agreements kept the situation akin to a kettle on a slow boil.

But the kettle is now boiling over. The two rising Asian giants, both led by strongly nationalistic regimes, neither of which wishes to blink first, are seeking geopolitical and strategic advantage. This timely book, Understanding the India-China Border: The Enduring Threat of War in the High Himalayas, explains what is happening on 'the roof of the world', and why that matters for us all.