Bruce Chatwin by Nicholas Shakespeare

A detailed, unflinching record of Chatwin's life and works. Shakespeare makes good use of original material and the memories of those who knew Chatwin, both admirers and detractors. There is a constant tension between the elusive qualities of the subject and the biographer's intention to pin down and explain; how do you write the life of someone who was constantly rewriting his own life as he lived it, and improved on his stories at each repetition? But this tension imparts to the book some of these myth-making characteristics.