Bruce Chatwin

Bruce Chatwin is one of the most significant British novelists and travel writers of our time. Comprising material collected over two decades from hundreds of contacts across five continents, Chatwin's letters are a valuable and illuminating record of one of the greatest and most enigmatic writers of the twentieth century.

The "spellbinding" (Los Angeles Times) second novel by the acclaimed author of The Songlines and In Patagonia Lewis and Benjamin Jones, identical twins, were born with the century on a farm on the English-Welsh border. For eighty years they live on the farm--sharing the same clothes, tilling the same soil, sleeping in the same bed. Their lives and the lives of their neighbors--farmers, drovers, clergymen, traders, coffin-makers--are only obliquely touched by the chaos of twentieth-century progress. Nevertheless, the twins' world--a few square miles of countryside--is rich in the oddities, the wonders, and the tragedies of the human experience. In this extraordinary novel, Bruce Chatwin has captured every nuance of the Welsh landscape and of the lives and souls of the people who live there.

Bruce Chatwin's bestselling novel traces the fortunes of the enigmatic and unconventional hero, Kaspar Utz.

In this collection of profiles, essays and travel stories, Chatwin takes us to Benin, where he is arrested as a mercenary during a coup; and to Nepal where he reminds us that 'Man's real home is not a house, but the Road, and that life itself is a journey to be walked on foot'

On the Black Hill is an elegantly written tale of identical twin brothers who grow up on a farm in rural Wales and never leave home. They till the rough soil and sleep in the same bed, touched only occasionally by the advances of the twentieth century. In depicting the lives of Benjamin and Lewis and their interactions with their small local community Chatwin comments movingly on the larger questions of human experience.

In 1812, Francisco Manoel da Silva, escaping a life of poverty in Brazil, sailed to the African kingdom of Dahomey, determined to make his fortune in the slave trade. His one remaining ambition is to return to Brazil in triumph, but his friendship with the mad, mercurial king of Dahomey is fraught with danger and threatens his dream.

Beautifully written and full of wonderful descriptions and intriguing tales, In Patagonia is an account of Bruce Chatwin's travels to a remote country in search of a strange beast and his encounters with the people whose fascinating stories delay him on the road.

Utz - eigentlich Kaspar Baron Utz, doch man befindet sich im real existierenden Sozialismus rund um den Prager Frühling - ist ein kauziger Privatgelehrter, dem zwar das Schloß seiner Vorfahren samt Dörfern und Grundbesitz abhanden gekommen ist, der aber etwas viel Kostbareres in seine schäbige Zweizimmerwohnung hineingerettet hat: seine riesige Sammlung Meißner Porzellan. Jahr für Jahr hindert sie ihn daran, in den Westen zu gehen, denn er kann schließlich seine Figuren nicht im Stich lassen. Aber es steckt natürlich noch etwas anderes dahinter - seine Liebe zu Prag, sein bizarres Arrangement mit seiner treusorgenden Haushälterin Marta, die in jeder Weise, nicht nur hinsichtlich der Installation seiner anspruchsvollen erotischen Existenz, unbezahlbar ist, und es steckt ein ästhetisches Lebensgefühl dahinter, das von Ideologien weder irritiert noch verlockt werden kann, weil es unendlich hoch über allen steht.

An elegant novel set in Prague about the possibility of freedom in an unfree state, from the acclaimed author of The Songlines and In Patagonia Utz collects Meissen porcelain with a passion. His collection, which he has protected and enlarged through both World War II and Czechoslovakia's years of Stalinism, numbers more than 1,000 pieces, all crammed into his two-room Prague flat.Utz is allowed to leave the country each year, and although he has considered defection, he always returns. He cannot take his precious collection with him, but he cannot leave it, either. And so Utz is as much owned by his porcelain as it is owned by him, as much of a prisoner of the collection as of the Communist state.A fascinating, enigmatic man, Kaspar Utz is one of Bruce Chatwin's finest creations. And his story, as delicately cast as one of Utz's porcelain figures, is unforgettable.

Vintage Voyages: A world of journeys, from the tallest mountains to the depths of the mindWhen Bruce Chatwinâ??s In Patagonia was published in 1977 it heralded the arrival of a startling new talent in British literature. All readers recognised its timeless quality â?? Auberon Waugh went as far as to call it `a classicâ??.

A collected edition of Bruce Chatwinâ??s acclaimed, captivating novels â?? On the Black Hill, Utz and The Viceroy of Ouidah â?? with an introduction by Hanya YanagiharaWhile Bruce Chatwin is best known as a master of travel literature, his three acclaimed novels must not be overlooked.

For its twenty-fifth anniversary, a new edition of Bruce Chatwin's classic work with a new introduction by Rory StewartPart adventure, part novel of ideas, part spiritual autobiography, The Songlines is one of Bruce Chatwin's most famous books. Set in the desolate lands of the Australian Outback, it tells the story of Chatwin's search for the source and meaning of the ancient "dreaming tracks" of the Aborigines--the labyrinth of invisible pathways by which their ancestors "sang" the world into existence. This singular book, which was a New York Times bestseller when it was published in 1987, engages all of Chatwin's lifelong passions, including his obsession with travel, his interest in the nomadic way of life, and his hunger to understand man's origins and nature. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

Gives an account of Bruce Chatwin's journey through Patagonia, where he searched for almost-forgotten legends, Butch Cassidy's log cabin, and the descendants of Welsh immigrants.

Bruce Chatwin provides a fascinating background to indigenous Australian life. The songlines are the invisible pathways that criss-cross Australia, tracks connecting communities and following ancient boundaries.

Although he is best known for his luminous reports from the farthest-flung corners of the earth, Bruce Chatwin possessed a literary sensibility that reached beyond the travel narrative to span a world of topics--from art and antiques to archaeology and architecture. This spirited collection of previously neglected or unpublished essays, articles, short stories, travel sketches, and criticism represents every aspect and period of Chatwin's career as it reveals an abiding theme in his work: his fascination with, and hunger for, the peripatetic existence. While Chatwin's poignant search for a suitable place to "hang his hat," his compelling arguments for the nomadic "alternative," his revealing fictional accounts of exile and the exotic, and his wickedly en pointe social history of Capri prove him to be an excellent observer of social and cultural mores, Chatwin's own restlessness, his yearning to be on the move, glimmers beneath every surface of this dazzling body of work.

Arkady Wolschok, ein Australier russischer Herkunft, führt den Erzähler in die mysteriöse Welt der Aborigines ein. Der Kosmopolit mit Universitätsabschluss hat Java, Indien, Afghanistan und große Teile Europas bereist. Nun versucht er im trocken-heißen Nordterritorium Australiens beim Straßen- und Eisenbahnbau oder bei Ölbohrungen zu verhindern, dass die heiligen Stätten der Aborigines zerstört werden.