This is the remarkable story of Dr Sanduk Ruit, the Nepalese eye surgeon who had personally restored the sight of over 120 000 people. The son of salt trader, he was born in 1955 in a mountain village with no school. So, aged seven, he walked with his father and his yaks for 11 days along perilous tracks to Darjeeling, where he was sent to St Robert’s School. It was three years before he saw his family again.

It was the death of his sister and the desire to make a difference to the lives of poor villagers that drove Ruit to study medicine. He won a scholarship to a prestigious university. As a young doctor he joined the ophthalmology department of Bir Hospital in Kathmandu. On an outreach surgical camp he first experienced the magic of restoring sight.

Fred Hollows became his mentor and together they developed a strategy for using inexpensive intraocular lenses to bring small-incision cataract surgery to the developing world. Ruit went on to develop a new intraocular lens at a fraction of the cost of the ones manufactured in developed countries.

Ruit and Fred Hollows founded the Tilganga Institute of Ophthalmology in Kathmandu, in which over 90 000 operations have been performed and over 500 medical people from around the world have been trained.

Ali Gripper worked closely with Ruit for three years to write this book. She saw him undertake journeys across rivers and ravines, up mountains and on horseback to reach his patients and then, in remote villages with no electricity, personally performing over 70 operations a day. Gripper has absolutely captured the essence of this extraordinary man, who came from such humble beginnings to be regarded, due to his phenomenal work and vision, as almost Godlike today.

Reviewed by Rosamund Burton