Despite the critical acclaim for his travel sketches and books, Bruce Chatwin disliked being labeled a travel writer. He conceded, however, that travel was central to his writing and that he could not write unless he traveled. Asked by interviewer Michael Ignatieff what travel meant to him, Chatwin replied: “The word travel is the same as the French travail. It means hard work, penance, and finally a journey.” The result of that travail is a body of work that resists classification. Nicholas Murray argues that Chatwin's “books straddle the genres of novel and travel-writing and blur the distinction between fact and fiction.” Peripatetic by nature, Chatwin ignored both the boundaries imposed by geography and those imposed by genre.

Charles Bruce Chatwin was born in Sheffield, England, on 13 May 1940 to Charles Chatwin, a lawyer, and Margharita Turnell Chatwin. He began his nomadic way of life early; in The Songlines...