Far Journeys

Chatwin, who died in 1989, left behind thousands of photographs as well as 50 notebooks which were his source material for In Patagonia , The Songlines and his other books. This album, which combines 100 color photographs with excerpts from his travel notes, is a revelation, a breathtaking journey of discovery true to Chatwin's vision of the world as a place of untapped mystery and enchantment. Chatwin's disjointed jottings, though they lack the polish of his travel books, are sprinkled with telling observations of the people and places he encountered from Senegal to Turkey. His surprising photographs show a bat cave in Java, devastated shantytowns in Mauritania, painted temples in Nepal, mudbrick granaries in Mali, an azure mausoleum in Afghanistan and the Nazca lines tracing huge geometric forms in the Peruvian desert. Many of the photographs explore abstract, brightly colored patterns; others present soaring views of a windmill in England, West African workers or an abandoned Wyoming mine. 25,000 first printing; first serial to the New Yorker. (Nov.)