The Songlines

For its twenty-fifth anniversary, a new edition of Bruce Chatwin's classic work with a new introduction by Rory Stewart


Part adventure, part novel of ideas, part spiritual autobiography, The Songlines is one of Bruce Chatwin's most famous books. Set in the desolate lands of the Australian Outback, it tells the story of Chatwin's search for the source and meaning of the ancient dreaming tracks of the Aborigines the labyrinth of invisible pathways by which their ancestors sang the world into existence. This singular book, which was a New York Times bestseller when it was published in 1987, engages all of Chatwin's lifelong passions, including his obsession with travel, his interest in the nomadic way of life, and his hunger to understand man's origins and nature.

BRUCE CHATWIN (1940 1989) is the author of the acclaimed books In Patagonia, The Viceroy of Ouidah, Utz, and On the Black Hill, winner of the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. He died outside Nice, France, on January 18, 1989.

RORY STEWART is a member of the British Parliament and the author of the New York Times bestseller The Places In Between and, most recently, Can Intervention Work? (with Gerald Knaus). He lives in Dufton, England.