What Am I Doing Here - Softcover

Bruce Chatwin

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0140115773 ISBN 13: 9780140115772

Publisher: Penguin, 1989

Synopsis

In this text, Bruce Chatwin writes of his father, of his friend Howard Hodgkin, and of his talks with Andre Malraux and Nadezhda Mandelstram. He also follows unholy grails on his travels, such as the rumour of a "wolf-boy" in India, or the idea of looking for a Yeti.

About this title

Review:

This is the last of Bruce Chatwin's works to be published while he was still alive (he penned the introduction in 1988, a few months before he died). It's a collection of Chatwin gems--profiles, essays, and travel stories that span the world, from trekking in Nepal and sailing down the Volga to working on a film with Werner Herzog in Ghana and travelling with Indira Gandhi in India. Chatwin excels, as usual, in the finely honed tale.

Review:

"As a writer he was unclassifiably interesting: lucid, ironic, cool. He seemed to owe nothing to anybody." (Colin Thubron Sunday Times)

"Chatwin is equally fascinating on places. He goes yeti-hunting in Nepal, and magnificently evokes the Himalayas' seductive harshness. He visits Afghanistan in the steps of his own favourite writer, Robert Byron, and reveals something no current news report ever succeeds in doing why anyone should want to spend time in that beautiful, tormented land...human existence at least as Chatwin sees it is gloriously open-ended, unpredictable and exotic" (Sunday Times)

"One of its chief delights is that it contains so many of its author'sbest anecdotes, his choicest performances" (Salman Rushdie Observer)

"I like the combination of its far-reaching quality and the minute precision with which his thoughts are charted" (Rose Tremain Sunday Times)

"All the writing in this volume demonstrates Bruce Chatwin’s loathing of the humdrum, the dreary, the predictable. What attracted him was the unusual, the weird and wonderful... the journalist in him (strongly present) knew a good story when it heard one" (Margaret Forster Guardian)

About this edition

• Publisher: Penguin
• Publication date: 1989
• ISBN 10: 0140115773
• ISBN 13: 9780140115772
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 384