Where to Start with Bruce Chatwin: A Reading Guide
Where to start with Bruce Chatwin — how to approach In Patagonia, his essential travel memoir that reinvented the form. A complete reading guide to the British author.
By Natalie Osei
Bruce Chatwin (1940–1989) was a British writer, art critic, and traveller whose brief career — he published five books between 1977 and his death at forty-eight — produced some of the most celebrated travel writing and literary fiction of the late twentieth century. In Patagonia (1977) is widely regarded as the work that reinvented travel writing as a literary form, bringing to the genre a novelist’s attention to voice, structure, and character alongside the factual authority of reportage. The two are, in Chatwin’s practice, not always clearly distinguished.
Where to Start: In Patagonia (1977)
The essential Chatwin — and one of the most influential travel books of the twentieth century. The official premise is a quest: Chatwin is travelling south through Patagonia in search of a piece of brontosaurus skin (it was, he later discovered, a mylodon) that his grandmother kept in a cabinet in her house in Northumberland. As quests go, it dissolves almost immediately into the book’s actual project: a portrait of a landscape and the impossibly strange people who have ended up in it.
Chatwin’s prose is among the most economical and atmospherically precise in English travel writing. He works in short sections — some a single page — that accumulate into a portrait rather than a narrative. Each vignette is complete in itself: a Welsh sheep farmer who still speaks the Welsh his great-grandparents brought to Patagonia in 1865; the ruins of a house where Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid sheltered after fleeing Pinkerton agents; a German hermit who has not spoken to another person in five years; a cave where the mylodon’s bones still lie. The accumulation of eccentrics, exiles, and displacements produces a portrait of Patagonia as a landscape that collects people who have nowhere else to go.
The formal innovation is as important as the prose quality. Where conventional travel writing follows a narrator through experience and reflects on it, Chatwin removes himself — his own reactions, his journey, his presence — as much as possible, giving the material the documentary flatness of a collection of found objects. The narrator is a voice, not a character; what matters is what is seen, not how the narrator feels about seeing it. This structural self-effacement was new in 1977 and has been enormously influential.
The reliability question is real but should not deter. Chatwin inventented and embellished; some of the incidents are fabricated or significantly altered. The book is more accurately classified as literary non-fiction in the tradition that prizes narrative truth over documentary accuracy. The landscape, the atmosphere, and the human strangeness are real; the specific incidents are Chatwin’s constructions from that material. Read accordingly.
Why In Patagonia Is the Ideal First Book
For a reader new to Bruce Chatwin, In Patagonia is the ideal first book because it is his breakthrough work, a celebrated classic of travel writing, and the fullest expression of his distinctive gift, the blending of travel, history, story, and imagination into a wholly original form. In Patagonia recounts Chatwin’s journey to the remote southern tip of South America, but it is far more than a conventional travelogue, weaving together encounters, histories, legends, and digressions into a fragmentary, allusive, and richly imaginative whole. As an entry point, it offers the fullest expression of Chatwin’s gifts, the original blending of travel, history, and story, the spare and elegant prose, and the restless, curious imagination. It welcomes the newcomer with its fascinating subject, its original form, and its elegant writing, drawing the reader into a classic of modern travel writing. It is his breakthrough work and the one that best represents his gifts, so that the new reader encounters Chatwin at his most characteristic. For the newcomer, then, In Patagonia is the natural and ideal starting point.
What to Expect as a New Reader
As a new reader, you can expect In Patagonia to be an original, fragmentary, and richly imaginative work of travel writing, blending travel, history, story, and imagination. You can expect an original form, for the book is far more than a conventional travelogue, weaving together encounters, histories, legends, and digressions into a fragmentary, allusive, and original whole. You can expect a fascinating subject, for Chatwin journeys to the remote southern tip of South America, a land of strange histories, exiles, and legends. You can expect spare and elegant prose, for Chatwin writes with precision, economy, and elegance, and a gift for the telling detail and the evocative fragment. You can expect a restless, curious imagination, for Chatwin is drawn to the strange, the marginal, and the story-laden, and his book is full of fascinating tangents and tales. You should expect an unconventional work that rewards the reader open to its fragmentary form. Expect, in short, an original, fragmentary, and richly imaginative work of travel writing, a classic introduction to Chatwin’s distinctive gift.
Going Deeper After Your First Book
Once In Patagonia has introduced you to Chatwin’s distinctive gift, the reader who wishes to go deeper can explore his other work, which continues his blending of travel, history, story, and imagination across travel writing and fiction. His other books include a celebrated exploration of the songlines of Aboriginal Australia and his nomadic theories, and his acclaimed fiction, all marked by his spare, elegant prose, his restless curiosity, and his original blending of forms. Reading these after In Patagonia deepens your appreciation of Chatwin’s distinctive gifts, the original blending of travel, history, and story, the elegant prose, and the restless, curious imagination that mark his work. His characteristic gifts run through his writing, and the reader who has been captivated by In Patagonia will find them across his work. Building your reading journey through Chatwin’s work is a matter of following his original, genre-blending writing from his breakthrough work into his other books. The reader who begins with In Patagonia and continues through his work will discover one of the most original and influential writers of travel and the imagination.
Reading Bruce Chatwin
Begin with In Patagonia — it is his most celebrated and most accessible book. The Songlines (1987) is his most ambitious, blending travel, fiction, and theory; On the Black Hill (1982) is his finest purely fictional work. All standalone.
For the full Bruce Chatwin bibliography, reviews, and biography, visit the Bruce Chatwin author page on Editors Reads.
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Frequently Asked Questions
Where should I start with Bruce Chatwin?
In Patagonia (1977) is the essential starting point — Chatwin's account of travelling through the southern cone of South America in search of a piece of skin from his grandmother's cabinet, which turned out to belong to a mylodon. One of the great travel books of the twentieth century; the work that reinvented the genre. His prose is extraordinary and the characters he meets are unforgettable.
What is In Patagonia about?
In Patagonia follows Chatwin through the vast, wind-scoured landscape of southern Argentina and Chile in search of the Patagonian mylodon — a prehistoric giant ground sloth — whose skin he remembered from a cabinet in his grandmother's house. The ostensible quest dissolves quickly into a sequence of encounters: Welsh settlers who still speak Welsh, descendants of outlaws (including Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid), exiles, eccentrics, and the geological and human strangeness of the landscape itself.
Is In Patagonia reliable as travel writing?
In Patagonia occupies an uncertain genre position — Chatwin blended factual reporting with invented or embellished material in ways that subsequent investigation confirmed. Several characters and incidents were invented or significantly altered; some of the historical material is inaccurate. Chatwin was notoriously cavalier about the distinction between fact and fiction, and was criticized for this in his lifetime. The book is best approached as literary non-fiction in the tradition that prizes narrative truth over documentary accuracy — extraordinarily crafted, but not a reliable guide.
What should I read after In Patagonia?
After In Patagonia, Chatwin's The Songlines (1987) — about Aboriginal Australians and his theory of nomadism — is his most ambitious book, though it blurs the line between travel writing and fiction even more explicitly. His novel On the Black Hill (1982) about Welsh farming twins is his most purely fictional work and shows his literary range. For the travel writing tradition In Patagonia belongs to, Patrick Leigh Fermor's A Time of Gifts and Paul Theroux's The Old Patagonian Express (which covers similar geography from a different sensibility) are essential companions.
