NEW YORK: Peter Matthiessen, a rich man's son who rejected a life of ease in favour of physical and spiritual challenges and produced such acclaimed works as “The Snow Leopard” and “At Play in the Fields of the Lord,” died on Saturday. He was 86.

His publisher Geoff Kloske of Riverhead Books said Matthiessen, who had been diagnosed with leukemia, was ill “for some months.” He died at a hospital near his home on Long Island in New York.

Matthiessen helped found The Paris Review, one of the most influential literary magazines, and won National Book Awards for “The Snow Leopard,” his spiritual account of the Himalayas, and for “Shadow Country.” His new novel, “In Paradise,” is scheduled for publication on Tuesday.

A leading environmentalist and wilderness writer, he embraced the best and worst that nature could bring him, whether trekking across the Himalayas, parrying sharks in Australia or enduring a hurricane in Antarctica.

He was a longtime liberal who befriended Cesar Chavez and wrote a defence of Indian activist Leonard Peltier, “In the Spirit of Crazy Horse,” that led to a highly publicised, and unsuccessful, lawsuit by an FBI agent who claimed Matthiessen had defamed him.—AP