Author(s): Bruce Chatwin

Non-Fiction

''What Am I Doing Here?'(the question Rimbaud asked in Ethiopia), because it is more ragged than anything else he wrote, tells us more about Bruce Chatwin himself - his interests and friends, if not his passions. He writes of his father, of his friend...Howard Hodgkin, and his tete-a-tetes with Andre Malraux and Nadezhda Mandalstram...Ideally he gets a really bizarre bee in his bonnet, such as a rumour of 'wolf-boy' in India, ora Chinese fengshui geomancer in Hong Kong, or the idea of looking for a Yeti, and he sets off and deals with it. At its most successful histravel is a search for an unholy grail - something freakish, plainly an excuse - and off he goes, and the piece is a winner' - Paul Theroux, Telegraph