Author: Bruce Chatwin

Bruce Chatwin’s fascination with nomads and wanderlust represents itself in reverse in On the Black Hill, a tale of two brothers (identical twins) who never go anywhere. They stay in the farmhouse on the English-Welsh border where they were born, tilling the rough soil and sleeping in the same bed, touched only occasionally by the advance of the 20th century. Smacking of a Welsh Ethan Frome, Chatwin evokes the lonely tragedies of farm life, and above all the vibrant land of Wales.

Bruce Chatwin’s bestselling novel traces the fortunes of Kaspar Utz, an enigmatic collector of Meissen porcelain living in Cold War Czechoslovakia. Although Utz is allowed to leave the country each year, and considers defecting each time, he always returns to his Czech home, a prisoner of the Communist state and of his precious collection.