Under the Sun; The Letters of Bruce Chatwin

Chatwin, Bruce

ISBN 10: 0224089897 / ISBN 13: 9780224089890

Published by Jonathan Cape, London, 2010

About this Item

Bound in the publisher's original black cloth over boards, spine stamped in gilt. Decorated endpapers and additional black and white illustrations between pp 282-283.

Seller Inventory # 9019719

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Under the Sun; The Letters of Bruce Chatwin
• Publisher: Jonathan Cape, London
• Publication Date: 2010
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0224089897
• ISBN 13: 9780224089890
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition: 1st.
• Condition: Fine
• Dust Jacket Condition: near fine
• Seller catalogs:
  • Literature
  • Book

About this title

Synopsis

'I am most certainly in the mood for writing letters'

Bruce Chatwin is one of the most significant British novelists and travel writers of our time. His books have become modern-day classics which defy categorisation, assimilating elements of fiction, essay, reportage, history and gossip, inspired by and reflecting his incredible journeys. Tragically, Chatwin's compelling narrative voice was cut off just as he had found it. One month before his death he lamented, 'There are so many things I want to do.' 'Bruce had just begun' said his friend, Salman Rushdie, 'we saw only the first act'.

While we shall never know the surprise of his unwritten works, Chatwin left behind a body of writing that is striking for its freshness; an authentic conduit which allows us to return to him and to be rewarded: a wealth of letters and postcards that he wrote, from his first week at school until shortly before his death at the age of forty-eight. Whether typed on Sotheby's notepaper or hastily scribbled, Chatwin's correspondence reveals more about himself than he was prepared to expose in his books; his health and finances, his literary ambitions and tastes, his uneasiness about his sexual orientation; above all, his lifelong quest for where to live. Written with the verve and sharpness of expression that first marked him out as a writer, Chatwin's letters gives a vivid synopsis of his changing interests and concerns throughout his life.

Careful and considered in drafting his published work, the letters are Chatwin's only unedited writing, and a paean to a disappearing mode of communication: tangible proof of a life as it was lived, and possibly one of the last great collections of a writer's letters. Comprising material collected over two decades from hundreds of contacts across five continents, Under the Sun is a valuable and illuminating record of one of the greatest and most enigmatic writers of the twentieth century.

About the Authors

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.

Elizabeth Chatwin was born in the U.S.A. She came to London in 1961 to work at Sotheby's, where she met Bruce Chatwin. They married in1965. She now keeps Black Welsh Mountain Sheep.

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 books have been translated into twenty-two languages. They include The Vision of Elena Silves (winner of the Somerset Maugham Award), Snowleg, The Dancer Upstairs, Inheritance, Priscilla and Six Minutes in May. He has been longlisted for the Booker Prize twice and is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.