Bruce Chatwin

Bruce Chatwin

by NicholasShakespeare (Author)

Synopsis

Award-winning novelist Nicholas Shakespeare has written the definitive biography of one of the most influential literary figures of our time: Bruce Chatwin, whose works strangely compelling combination of research, first-hand experience, myth, and mystification may have been the real substance of his seemingly contradictory life. Chatwin s first book, In Patagonia, became an international bestseller, revived the art of travel writing, and inspired a generation to set out in search of adventure. Chatwin became a celebrity, while remaining a conundrum. With little formal education, he had become a director of Sotheby s. An avid collector, he eschewed material things and revered the nomadic life. Married for twenty-three years, he had male lovers throughout the world. And only at his death did his personal myth fail him. Nicholas Shakespeare, who was given unrestricted access to his papers, spent eight years retracing Chatwin s steps and interviewing the people who knew him. The result is a biography that is at once sympathetic and revelatory. "From the Trade Paperback edition.""

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More Information

Format: Hardcover
Pages: 384
Edition: 1st Edition 1st Printing
Publisher: The Harvill Press
Published: 01 Apr 1999

ISBN 10: 1860465447
ISBN 13: 9781860465444
Prizes: Shortlisted for Whitbread Book Awards: Biography Category 1999 and Whitbread Prize (Biography) 1999.

Media Reviews
In Nicholas Shakespeare, Chatwin has found the right biographer. This is a magnificent work of empathy and detection.
--Colin Thubron, The Sunday Times (London)
An epic work of immense satisfaction. In awe-inspiring detail and with a rounding-out of all the other characters, Shakespeare takes us successively through the milieux of Chatwin's life--and drenches all these worlds in their emotional, human implications.
--Duncan Fallowell, The Times (London)
Biographies don't come any better than this. Eight years in the writing, Bruce Chatwin is a glorious quilt-work of texts, voices, and places, joined together with consummate judgment.
--Justin Wintle, Financial Times (London)
Nicholas Shakespeare's biography feels concise: comprehensively researched, elegantly written, perfectly balanced between the life, the books, and the ideas.
--Blake Morrison, Independent on Sunday
Author Bio
Nicholas Shakespeare is the author of The Vision of Elena Silves, winner of the Somerset Maugham Award for The High Flyer, for which he was nominated one of Granta 's Best of Young British Novelists in 1993, and The Dancer Upstairs. Between 1991 and 1998 he journeyed in Chatwin's tracks to research this authorized biography.

From the Trade Paperback edition.