The Songlines

'One man's impassioned song' is how the Sunday Telegraph describes this rare jewel of a book and a more apt description of it couldn't be found. It is truly one man's, one great artist's swansong to eternity and like all great works it has something to say to all of us.Billed as a 'travel book,' Bruce Chatwin's 'Songlines' is that in name only. Following in the steps of other literateurs who were also originally pigeonholed... Read Full Review

This is a difficult book to describe: it masquerades as a Theroux style travelogue, but is anything but. I love Paul Theroux, but this totally transcends his travel writing. Chatwin starts out describing a trip to the Australian Outback. It starts out pretty conventional, in beautiful descriptive prose...but before too long you realize you are actually reading Chatwin's brilliant ruminations about the human race as a species,... Read Full Review

Bruce, an English guy, heads into the Australian outback to check out aborigines, as part of his life-long interest in nomadic cultures. Part of the book is travel writing - the wacko Australian situations and characters he meets are fully described - part the history/psychology/philosophy of nomadic living and human aggression, and part a poetic description of Aboriginal culture.The link between a human sedentary existance... Read Full Review

William James said that to "learn the secrets of any science, we go to expert specialists, even though they may be eccentric persons, and not to commonplace pupils." It seems, Bruce Chatwin used the same method to shed light on what for him was the question of questions: the nature of human restlessness.The Songlines consists of the stories of the eccentric experts in the science of restlessness Chatwin met in Western ... Read Full Review

When I first migrated to Australia in 1983, I immediately started asking questions about the country's indigenous aborigines. For me, it was simple curiosity. New Zealand, where I'd come from, had imperfect race relations, but Maori dances, hakas, and creation stories were taught from primary level at every school. Like many "Pakeha" (white) New Zealanders, I had a part-Maori partner - whom I later married. In Perth, however,... Read Full Review