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Shakespeare, Nicholas Bruce Chatwin ISBN 13: 9781860465444

Bruce Chatwin - Hardcover

 
9781860465444: Bruce Chatwin
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In the years since his death from AIDS, Bruce Chatwin s reputation as a story-teller has grown and his books have continued to attract and inspire readers all over the world. At the same time there has been an increasing awareness that it was through his life and death that he created his ultimate story, a self-mythology based on a mixture of truth and fantasy. Journalist and traveller, devoted husband and active gay, glamorous socialite and single-minded loner, Chatwin condensed many lives and contradictions into his 48 years. In 1991 Nicholas Shakespeare was given unrestricted access to Chatwin s private notebooks, diaries and letters. Since then he has interviewed hundreds of friends, relations and enemies, and travelled through five continents in his footsteps. He has uncovered the Chatwin behind the masks, and has written a fascinating and definitive biography of one of the most elusive and charismatic literary figures of our time.

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Review:
Bruce Chatwin was the golden child of the contemporary English novel; by the time he died of an AIDS-related illness aged 49 in January 1989 he had produced the startlingly original masterpieces that made his name. Chatwin came late to being a published writer; In Patagonia, his instant classic of what can loosely be termed "travel literature", came out in 1977. In the preceding years this precocious, intense figure had been an art specialist at Sotheby's, a journalist with the Sunday Times, an archaeologist and a restless, questing traveller. By the time his novel of studying the Aboriginal dreamtime in Australia, The Songlines, was published, he had gained a worldwide audience.

An obsessive art collector, Chatwin also acquired people as he did fabulous objects. He took both male and female lovers while continuing to remain married to his wife Elizabeth, seemingly the most enduring relationship of his life. It is her cooperation and tenacity which enabled this biography to come about, as well as Nicholas Shakespeare's exhaustive research (the book was eight years in the making), and his countless interviews with friends and acquaintances from all corners of the globe. It is the international span of Chatwin's experiences that make the reader appreciate his desire to know all cultures and disciplines.

There is some excellent, evocative writing here, particularly in Shakespeare's account of Chatwin's last weeks, his disappointment at not winning the Booker Prize for Utz lifting when a friend told him of acclaimed Italian novelist Alberto Moravia's glowing review of the book in a newspaper. In particular, the detailed passage describing Chatwin's awful, miserable death surrounded by friends and family is harrowing yet moving to read. There are a plethora of adjectives used to describe Chatwin; the list generally includes words such as "elusive", "mercurial", and "charismatic". Yet what Nicholas Shakespeare brings across in this immense, excellent life of Chatwin is the complete aloneness of the man, an at times almost impenetrable solitude. He was a flamboyant fabulist, an unparalleled conversationalist, yet, as the Australian poet Les Murray is quoted as saying: "He was lonely and he wanted to be. He had those blue, implacable eyes that said: "I will reject you, I will forget you, because neither you nor any other human being can give me what I want".--Catherine Taylor

Review:
"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"

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  • PublisherThe Harvill Press
  • Publication date1999
  • ISBN 10 1860465447
  • ISBN 13 9781860465444
  • BindingHardcover
  • Edition number1
  • Number of pages384
  • Rating

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