And yet it is a wonderful piece of writing. It is often disjointed, it has some very short chapters, people only briefly appear in the narrative, before he heads off to the next location and snapshot of another life. To be honest, this wasn't quite what I was expecting. It is not about the landscape or the countries, rather Chatwin spends his time there meeting people, finding out about them and then following the gossamer threads of their lives from place to place and backwards and forwards in time. The six months that he spent there, become this book. The memory of it lived on in Chatwin's imagination and was the spark that made him give up his job and head out there in 1974. It wasn't a piece of a dinosaur, but another part of an extinct animal that had been found in Patagonia. It was a place that Brue Chatwin had longed to visit for years after seeing a piece of 'brontosaurus' in his grandparent's curiosity cabinet. It sits at the very end of a continent, nudges into the tumultuous Southern ocean, covers two countries and is a place of enigmas. I found lots of side dishes to enjoy, but it seems lacking in a main course. He repeats historical stories that have been debunked as myths.

This is a memoir with very little introspection or analysis. These are just a few examples of many vignettes. We learn the story of Jemmy Button, an indigenous person taken in 1830 from Tierra del Fuego, who traveled on the HMS Beagle. There are descriptions of extinct giant sloths. We get a description of the landscape and see photos from his travels. We hear a lot about Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, who apparently owned a cabin in the region. As he travels, he jumps from one topic to the next in a series of extremely short chapters. It is all reasonably interesting, but there is little organization or narrative arc.

Chatwin supplements what he hears from the people he meets with his own historical research. We hear many immigration stories and local legends.

He stops to visit people along the way, asks them questions about their family histories and the events that occurred in the area. Bruce Chatwin starts in Buenos Aires, and travels down Argentina, crossing the region known as Patagonia. Published in 1977, this book is a mix of history and travel diary.

In patagonia by bruce chatwin