On the Black Hill (Penguin Ink) - Softcover

Chatwin, Bruce

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0143119060 ISBN 13: 9780143119067

Publisher: Penguin Books, 2011

Synopsis

The "spellbinding" (Los Angeles Times) second novel by the acclaimed author of The Songlines and In Patagonia

Lewis and Benjamin Jones, identical twins, were born with the century on a farm on the English-Welsh border. For eighty years they live on the farm--sharing the same clothes, tilling the same soil, sleeping in the same bed. Their lives and the lives of their neighbors--farmers, drovers, clergymen, traders, coffin-makers--are only obliquely touched by the chaos of twentieth-century progress. Nevertheless, the twins' world--a few square miles of countryside--is rich in the oddities, the wonders, and the tragedies of the human experience. In this extraordinary novel, Bruce Chatwin has captured every nuance of the Welsh landscape and of the lives and souls of the people who live there.

About this title

Review:

Bruce Chatwin's fascination with nomads and wanderlust represents itself in reverse in On the Black Hill, a tale of two brothers (identical twins) who never go anywhere. They stay in the farmhouse on the English-Welsh border where they were born, tilling the rough soil and sleeping in the same bed, touched only occasionally by the advance of the 20th century. Smacking of a Welsh Ethan Frome, Chatwin evokes the lonely tragedies of farm life, and above all the vibrant land of Wales.

Review:

"Totally alive . . . a spellbinding portrayal of the unbreakable link between nature and the human spirit."
--Los Angeles Times Book Review

"A masterpiece, a chronicle of ordinary lives told with extraordinary insight." --St. Louis Post-Dispatch

"Scene after scene is brought to life with an enraptured attention that causes them to glow with an almost visionary light." -- The New York Times Book Review

"Remarkable...like a beautiful old quilt, made up of bright vivid patches, with scenes that surprise and delight and seem absolutely true."-- People

"A rare book, one of those splendid evocations of place made so justifiably famous by masters of the British novel in the past century: George Eliot, Hardy, Lawrence."-- Houston Post

About this edition

• Publisher: Penguin Books
• Publication date: 2011
• ISBN 10: 0143119060
• ISBN 13: 9780143119067
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 272
• Illustrator: Albrigo Daniel