WINNER OF THE WHITBREAD BEST FIRST NOVEL AWARD
Bruce Chatwin was born in Sheffield in 1940. After attending Marlborough School he began work as a porter at Sotheby's. Eight years later, having become one of Sotheby's youngest directors, he abandoned his job to pursue his passion for world travel. Between 1972 and 1975 he worked for the Sunday Times, before announcing his next departure in a telegram- 'Gone to Patagonia for six months.' This trip inspired the first of Chatwin's books, In Patagonia, which won the Hawthornden Prize and the E.M. Forster Award and launched his writing career. Two of his books have been made into feature films- The Viceroy of Ouidah (retitled Cobra Verde), directed by Werner Herzog, and Andrew Grieve's On the Black Hill. On publication The Songlines went straight to Number 1 in the Sunday Times bestseller list and remained in the top ten for nine months. On the Black Hill won the Whitbread First Novel Award while his novel Utz was nominated for the 1988 Booker Prize. He died in January 1989, aged forty-eight.
His deepest and best book
*Independent*
When I think of Bruce Chatwin now, I think of the ultimate
storyteller. It’s the resonance of the voice and the depth of his
vision that makes him one of the truly great writers of our
time
*Werner Herzog, from 'Bruce Chatwin' by Nicholas Shakespeare*
Nearly every writer of my generation in England has wanted, at some
point, to be Bruce Chatwin; wanted, like him, to talk of Fez and
Firdausi, Nigeria and Nuristan, with equal authority; wanted to be
talked about, as he is, with raucous envy; wanted above all to have
written his books…(he was) a writer no one who cares for literature
can afford not to read.
*New York Times*
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