Bruce Chatwin

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 novels have been translated into twenty languages. They include <i>The Vision of Elena Silves</i> winner of the Somerset Maugham Award <i>Snowleg </i>and <i>The Dancer Upstairs</i> which was chosen by the American Libraries Association in 1997 as the year's best novel and in 2001 was made into a film of the same name by John Malkovich. His most recent novel is <i>Inheritance</i>. He is married with two small boys and currently lives in Oxford. <p>Bruce Chatwin's death in 1989 brought a meteoric career to an abrupt end since he burst onto the literary scene in 1977 with his first book <i>In Patagonia</i>.<br><br>Chatwin himself was different things to different people: a journalist a photographer an art collector a restless traveller and a bestselling author; he was also a married man an active homosexual a socialite who loved to mix with the rich and famous and a single-minded loner who explored the limits of extreme solitude.<br><br>From unrestricted access to Chatwin's private notebooks diaries and letters Nicholas Shakespeare has compiled the definitive biography of one of the most charismatic and elusive literary figures of our time.<br><br>'A <b>magnificent </b>work of empathy and detection'<br>Colin Thubron <i>Sunday Times</i><br><br>'<b>Utterly compelling</b>'<br>Philip Marsden <i>Mail on Sunday</i><br><br>'A <b>fascinating</b> account of the man behind the myth'<br>Ian Thomson <i>Guardian</i></p> Of my contemporaries he had the most erudite and possibly the most brilliant mind An epic piece of work of immense satisfaction... Awe-inspiring Comprehensively researched elegantly written perfectly balanced between the life the books and the ideas Quite simply one of the most beautifully written painstakingly researched and cleverly constructed biographies of this decade... Original intelligent and observant A fascinating account of the man behind the myth