A very influential piece of writing, wrongly classified just as travel writing, when it is more about anthropology, infused with memoir and quite a handful of philosophical speculation begins with the Aboriginal Australian concept of songlines.

Travelling through Central Australia, Chatwin tries to understand these systems while gradually widening the book into a deep look at the idea of movement, fuelling his lifelong conviction that human beings are fundamentally migratory creatures.

It is all at once an observation, conversation, anecdote, notebook fragments and argument. Its treatment of Aboriginal cultures has rightly attracted criticism, particularly around Chatwin’s outsider perspective and tendency toward universalising speculation, but the book remains influential, mostly because of the questions it opens around travel, possession, place, storytelling and the Western urge to make other systems of knowledge legible to itself. A fascinating, compromised and formally restless book rather than a comfortable authority on its subject. 

Vintage Classics, London, 1998. Paperback. First published by Jonathan Cape in 1987; this Vintage edition first published 1998. Light shelf wear and rubbing to covers, with a small diagonal crease to lower front corner. Very good condition overall.