As a writer he was unclassifiably interesting: lucid, ironic, cool. He seemed to owe nothing to anybody.

Chatwin is equally fascinating on places. He goes yeti-hunting in Nepal, and magnificently evokes the Himalayas’ seductive harshness. He visits Afghanistan in the steps of his own favourite writer, Robert Byron, and reveals something no current news report ever succeeds in doing why anyone should want to spend time in that beautiful, tormented land…human existence at least as Chatwin sees it is gloriously open-ended, unpredictable and exotic

One of its chief delights is that it contains so many of its author’sbest anecdotes, his choicest performances

I like the combination of its far-reaching quality and the minute precision with which his thoughts are charted

All the writing in this volume demonstrates Bruce Chatwin’s loathing of the humdrum, the dreary, the predictable. What attracted him was the unusual, the weird and wonderful… the journalist in him (strongly present) knew a good story when it heard one

As one reads it one cannot forget it was compiled by a uniquely gifted writer in the face of death, urgently pinning down experiences important to him. All that might suggest a scrapbook, but as a legendary traveller and observer of people Chatwin had more to put into his than most