The late Bruce Chatwin carved out a literary career as unique as any writer's in this century: his books included In Patagonia, a fabulist travel narrative, The Viceroy of Ouidah, a mock-historical tale of a Brazilian slave-trader in 19th century Africa, and The Songlines, his beautiful, elegiac, comic account of following the invisible pathways traced by the Australian aborigines. Chatwin was nothing if not erudite, and the vast, eclectic body of literature that underlies this tale of trekking across the outback gives it a resonance found in few other recent travel books. A poignancy, as well, since Chatwin's untimely death made The Songlines one of his last books.


From Publishers Weekly
PW praised Chatwin's "entertaining" and "resonant" reflections on the distinctions between settled people and wanderers, and between human aggression and pacifism, as he searches central Australia for the pathways along which aborigines travel to perform their cultural activities. Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Library Journal
For Australian aborigine's "songlines" are the string of sites of significant cultural events, such as marriage, song, trades, dances, a hunt, etc., in an individual's and group's history. They are the invisible means by which a man indicates and keeps track of his territory. British author Chatwin ( In Patagonia) organizes his book around the Australian aboriginal's notion of songlines, although the writing is more often than not on the periphery of this theme. Interspersed with the explanation of songlines are a narrative of a mild adventure, sometimes with novelistic dialogue, and jottings from Chatwin's notebooks (making up a considerable portion of the book), which include his own musings and observations, proverbs, and quotes from famous people, most of which concern travel and wandering and theory about instinct, myth, etc. A curious work.Roger W. Fromm, Bloomsburg Univ. of Pennsylvania Lib.Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.


The New York Times Book Review, Andrew Harvey
Part adventure-story, part novel-of-ideas, part satire on the follies of "progress," part spiritual autobiography, part passionate plea for a return to simplicity of being and behavior, The Songlines is a seething gallimaufry of a book.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Part adventure story, part philosophical essay, this extraordinary book takes Bruce Chatwin into the heart of Australia on a search for the source and meaning of man's restless nature.

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly

In his new book, Chatwin (In Patagonia, etc.) explores the area around Alice Springs, in central Australia, where he ponders the source and meaning of nomadism, the origins of human violence and the emergence of mankind amid arid conditions. Searching for ``Songlines''the invisible pathways along which aboriginal Australians travel to perform their central cultural activitiesChatwin is accompanied by Arkady Volchok, a native Australian and tireless bushwalker who is helping the aboriginals protect their sacred sites through the provisions of the Land Rights Act. Chatwin's description of his adventures in the bush forms the most entertaining part of the book, but he also includes long quotations from other writersanthropologists, biologists, even poets. These secondary materials provide a resonant backdrop for the author's reflections on the distinctions between settled people and wanderers, between human aggression and pacifism. First serial to the New York Review of Books. (August 17)

Library Journal