Episode cover
Bruce Chatwin: The Songlines
E
June 18, 2020 · 46 min

Note: given the current temporary closure of TPL due to the COVID-19 pandemic, we have made our best efforts to offer suggestions below for materials which are part our online collections (indicated) and available at home to anyone with a current Toronto Library card. Read: Why are wait times on ebooks or audiobooks sometimes so long?

 

Works by Bruce Chatwin

The Songlines

In Patagonia

Anatomy of Restlessness: Selected Writings, 1969-1989 (ebook)

On the Black Hill (ebook)

Utz (ebook)

Books About Bruce Chatwin

Bruce Chatwin by Nicholas Shakespeare

Anywhere Out of the World: the Work of Bruce Chatwin by Jonathan Chatwin

Under the Sun: The Letters of Bruce Chatwin, Edited by Elizabeth Chatwin and Nicholas Shakespeare

Other Related Books or Materials

Bowie’s Bookshelf: the Hundred Books that Changed David Bowie’s Life (ebook)

Walking With Bruce Chatwin by Rory Stewart (about the importance and influence of The Songlines] (link opens a New York Review of Books article from June 2012)

Travel and Endless Talk Connected me to Details of Chatwin’s Songlines Missed (link opens an article from The Guardian from Oct 2017)

Bruce Chatwin, the Forgotten Travel-Writer is At-Last Being Remembered by Nicholas Shakespeare (link opens an article from The Oldie)

About the Host

Novelist Randy Boyagoda is a professor of English at the University of Toronto and principal of St. Michael’s College, where he holds the Basilian Chair in Christianity, Arts, and Letters. He is the author of three novels: Original Prin, Beggar's Feast, and Governor of the Northern Province. His fiction has been nominated for the Scotiabank Giller Prize (2006) and IMPAC Dublin Literary Prize (2012), and named a New York Times Book Review Editor’s Choice Selection (2012 and 2019) and Globe and Mail Best Book (2018). He contributes essays, reviews, and opinions to publications including the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, First Things, Commonweal, Harper’s, Financial Times (UK), Guardian, New Statesman, Globe and Mail, and National Post, in addition to appearing frequently on CBC Radio. He served as President of PEN Canada from 2015-2017.

Music is by Yuka

 

From the Archives

Writers Off the Page: 40 Years of TIFA is the first series associated with the Toronto Public Library’s multi-year digital initiative, From the Archives, which presents curated and digitized audio, video and other content from some of Canada’s biggest cultural institutions and organizations.

Thanks to the Toronto International Festival of Authors (TIFA) for allowing TPL access to their archives to feature some of the best-known writers in the world from moments in the past. Thanks as well to Library and Archives Canada for generously allowing TPL access to these archives.