In this collection of profiles, essays and travel stories, Chatwin takes us to Benin, where he is arrested as a mercenary during a coup; to Boston to meet an LSD guru who believes he is Christ; to India with Indira Ghandi when she attempted a political comeback in 1978; and to Nepal where he reminds us that 'Man's real home is not a house, but the Road, and that life itself is a journey to be walked on foot'

Bruce Chatwinwas born in Sheffield in 1940. After attending Marlborough School he began work as a porter at Sotheby's. Eight years later, having become one of Sotheby's youngest directors, he abandoned his job to pursue his passion for world travel. Between 1972 and 1975 he worked for theSunday Times, before announcing his next departure in a telegram: 'Gone to Patagonia for six months.' This trip inspired the first of Chatwin's books,In Patagonia, which won the Hawthornden Prize and the E.M. Forster Award and launched his writing career. Two of his books have been made into feature films:The Viceroy of Ouidah(retitledCobra Verde), directed by Werner Herzog, and Andrew Grieve'sOn the Black Hill. On publicationThe Songlineswent straight to Number 1 in theSunday Timesbestseller list and remained in the top ten for nine months.On the Black Hillwon the Whitbread First Novel Award while his novelUtzwas nominated for the 1988 Booker Prize. He died in January 1989, aged forty-eight.

Bruce Chatwin was, in his life as in his art, forever in search of the extraordinary, the exotic and the unexpected.