Product Description

The songlines are the invisible pathways that criss-cross Australia, ancient tracks connecting communities and following ancient boundaries. Along these lines Aboriginals passed the songs which revealed the creation of the land and the secrets of its past. In this magical account, Chatwin recalls his travels across the length and breadth of Australia seeking to find the truth about the songs and unravel the mysteries of their stories.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #22021 in Books
• Published on: 1998-11-28
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 304 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
The late Bruce Chatwin carved out a literary career as unique as any writer's in this century: his books included In Patagonia, a fabulist travel narrative, The Viceroy of Ouidah, a mock-historical tale of a Brazilian slave-trader in 19th century Africa, and The Songlines, his beautiful, elegiac, comic account of following the invisible pathways traced by the Australian aborigines. Chatwin was nothing if not erudite, and the vast, eclectic body of literature that underlies this tale of trekking across the outback gives it a resonance found in few other recent travel books. A poignancy, as well, since Chatwin's untimely death made The Songlines one of his last books.

Review
"'Extraordinary...a remarkable and satisfying book' Observer"

About the Author
Bruce Chatwin reinvented British travel writing with his first book, In Patagonia, and followed it with four other books, each unique and extraordinary. He died in 1989.

Customer Reviews

Outback adventure
In the late 1980s, travel writer Bruce Chatwin visited the Australian outback to find out more about the songlines, the invisible pathways across the continent which connect communities and follow ancient boundaries. During his journey, he is accompanied by a Russian-born Australian, Arkady Volchok, who is mapping the sacred sites of the aborigines. Volchok proves to be a wonderful and knowledgeable host, showing Chatwin the rugged beauty of the landscape and introducing him to its many native human inhabitants.

Chatwin's writing is deceptively simple but very engaging; he captures feelings and characters so aptly that it's almost like you're on the journey with him. I thoroughly enjoyed his adventure to Alice Springs and the far north, especially his encounters with Jim Hanlon, a 73-year-old loner who wanted Chatwin to stay in a caravan "smelling of something dead" to finish his book, and Donkey Donk, an aboriginal who takes him hunting in a Ford Sedan which degenerates into a bit of a sad, hit-and-miss affair.

My only quibble is that the book begins to wane about two-thirds of the way in and never quite picks up the pace again. Chatwin fills much of the last few chapters with jottings from old notebooks in an attempt to explore his idea that travelling is a natural instinct in humankind that has been tamed by the trappings of materialistic life. I appreciated the point, but felt it had been laboured much too strongly.

Despite this, The Songlines is a highly readable and interesting travel tale, well worth reading, especially if you are interested in nomadic lifestyles, aboriginal culture and the Australian outback.

A wandering star
The songlines criss cross Australia; the paths taken by the first men as they sang creation into being. Each Aborigine tends his section of the line, and must regularly sing the songs that keep creation new.

Chatwin's wanderings took him to Australia's red centre to explore the origins of these lines, as part of a project he was toying with (but never completed, so far as I'm aware) exploring the roots of man's incessant need to travel.

His prose is as sparse and dusty as the landscape itself as he meets the native and European Australians who inhabit the vast emptiness of the outback. The result is as beautiful and strange as the outback itself.

The book uncovers a little about the Aborigines, a group who have not been often explored in mainstream wirting before, as well as the racism felt by many Australians towards them.

But its main success is opening up the dusty interior itself - a place on a scale that is unimaginable to Europeans. Chatwin's triumph is to reveal the magic that pervades Australia - that a stagnant pond can be as important a spiritual site as Ayers Rock.

For anyone with an interest in Australia, Aboriginal culture or the nature of man's wanderlust, this is an essential read. Highly recommended.

A story of a segment of humanity who have a commitment
This story is not really an edited book, rather a conversation with a dusty traveller whom you have met on an isolated rural railway station, somewhere far away, with two days until the next train. It starts as something to pass the time, but becomes a tale of the global history of Man, revealing many reasons for doing what we do - or having done what we have done. It makes us question the values that our civilisation has socialised us into believing in, not because we envy the squalid freedom of the aborigines, but because we must envy that they still understand the nature of Nature, and the nature of Man, and also of Man in Nature.. Sometimes it asks questions and answers them, and sometimes it gives an answer and you are left searching for the question. A book to be read alone, without distraction, when you have time to read it without laying it down. An memorable book which can be used to find some answers to many problems in the world today, whether they be related to religious divergence, racism, ethnic conflict, suppression of minorities, environmental conflicts, etc., etc., etc..