Bruce Chatwin
By: Nicholas Shakespeare.
Publisher: Harvill in association with Jonathan Cape
Published: 1999
Place of publication: London
Language: eng
Number of pages: 591
Subjects: Chatwin, Bruce, -- 1940-1989 -- Criticism and interpretation; Travelers' writings, English -- History and criticism; Travelers in literature; Travel in literature
Description: "Bruce Chatwin's death from AIDS in 1989 brought a meteoric career to an abrupt end. Chatwin burst onto the literary scene in 1977 with his first book, In Patagonia, which changed for a generation the definition of travel writing and brought a fresh lustre to modern English letters. The uncategorisable books that followed - The Viceroy of Ouidah, On the Black Hill, The Songlines and Utz - confirmed his status as a major writer able to reinvent himself constantly." "He was different things to different people: a director at Sotheby's with an unerring eye for detail; an archaeologist present at the finding of the evidence of man's earliest use of fire; a successful Sunday Times journalist; a photographer; an art collector; a restless traveller and a best-selling author. Married for 23 years, he was also an active homosexual. A socialite who loved to mix with the rich and famous, he was a single-minded loner who explored the limits of extreme solitude. Melancholic and manic, intense and uproariously funny, he loved most of all to tell stories - about his friends, about the people he met on his many travels and about himself." "In 1991, Nicholas Shakespeare was given unrestricted access to Chatwin's private notebooks, diaries and letters. Looking for the Chatwin behind the masks, he has written the definitive biography of one of the most charismatic and elusive literary figures of our time."--Jacket.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.