 During his illness, Chatwin continued to write. Elizabeth encouraged him to use a letter he had written to her from Prague in 1967 as an inspiration for a new story. During this trip, he had met Konrad Just, an art collector. This meeting and the letter to Elizabeth served as the basis for Chatwin's next work. Utz (1988) was a novel about the obsession that leads people to collect. Set in Prague, the novel details the life and death of Kaspar Utz, a man obsessed with his collection of Meissen porcelain. Utz was well-received and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize.
