Bruce Chatwin

Description

Beautifully written and critically acclaimed, this is the definitive biography of one of our most fascinating cultural icons Bruce Chatwin's death in 1989 brought a meteoric career to an abrupt end, since he burst onto the literary scene in 1977 with his first book, In Patagonia. Chatwin himself was different things to different people- a journalist, a photographer, an art collector, a restless traveller and a bestselling author; he was also a married man, an active homosexual, a socialite who loved to mix with the rich and famous, and a single-minded loner who explored the limits of extreme solitude. From unrestricted access to Chatwin's private notebooks, diaries and letters, Nicholas Shakespeare has compiled the definitive biography of one of the most charismatic and elusive literary figures of our time. 'A magnificent work of empathy and detection' Colin Thubron, Sunday Times 'Utterly compelling' Philip Marsden, Mail on Sunday 'A fascinating account of the man behind the myth' Ian Thomson, Guardian

Nicholas Shakespeare was born in 1957. The son of a diplomat, much of his youth was spent in the Far East and South America. His novels have been translated into twenty languages. They include The Vision of Elena Silves, winner of the Somerset Maugham Award, Snowleg, and The Dancer Upstairs, which was chosen by the American Libraries Association in 1997 as the year's best novel, and in 2001 was made into a film of the same name by John Malkovich. His most recent novel is Inheritance. He is married with two small boys and currently lives in Oxford.

"Of my contemporaries he had the most erudite and possibly the most brilliant mind" -- Salman Rushdie "An epic piece of work of immense satisfaction... Awe-inspiring" The Times "A fascinating account of the man behind the myth" Guardian "Comprehensively researched, elegantly written, perfectly balanced between the life, the books and the ideas" Independent on Sunday "Quite simply, one of the most beautifully written, painstakingly researched and cleverly constructed biographies of this decade... Original, intelligent and observant" Literary Review