Editions

The Novels

The Novels

A collected edition of Bruce Chatwin’s acclaimed, captivating novels – On the Black Hill, Utz and The Viceroy of Ouidah – with an introduction by Hanya Yanagihara

While Bruce Chatwin is best known as a master of travel literature, his three acclaimed novels must not be overlooked. Here we see a writer exploring human life, from its freedoms to its limits, in ever more exhilarating and unexpected ways.

In On the Black Hill, twin brothers begin to realise that the world beyond their familiar fields is changing. In Utz, a scholar visits a communist state to meet an eccentric porcelain collector. And in The Viceroy of Ouidah, an ambitious slave trader makes a choice that could threaten his ultimate dream.

Reviews

  • "One of the most influential writers of his generation"

    Daily Telegraph

  • "A story lonely and rich and human... Every time I think of the events towards the ending I get goose bumps again"

    Cynan Jones, Guardian on On the Black Hill

  • "Brilliant, startling, marvellous... Once picked up, the book cannot be put down"

    The Times on The Viceroy of Ouidah

  • "Quite simply dazzling"

    Observer on The Viceroy of Ouidah

  • "Not a word is wasted in the telling of this tale. Each sentence is fashioned, polished, and put into place with microscopic care"

    Daily Telegraph on Utz

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About the Author

Bruce Chatwin

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.

Bruce Chatwin

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