His interest in Patagonia first awakened by a piece of sloth skin from that region that hung in his grandmother's house, Chatwin sets out on a mazy route from Buenos Aires to Tierra del Fuego. As he makes for where the ancient sloth was discovered a century before, he glimpses into the lives of the settlers, gauchos and Indians who have spread themselves thinly across the pampas. The deep loneliness, isolation and fatalism implicit in the lives of those living at the end of the earth is conveyed starkly in Chatwin's laconic prose. Roaming between these outposts of humanity, he amuses himself in the pursuit of a series of riddles aside from the sloth mission - and as we are drawn into Chatwin's world of esoterica, where Butch Cassidy lived to a ripe old age, and revolutionaries become barbers, the lines between fact, supposition and invention become almost impossible to discern. Which is what makes this intellectual odyssey - or 'ridiculous journey', as Chatwin self-deprecatingly puts it - such fun; the recondite histories woven into the narrative only enrich Patagonia as a land of dreams and possibility. Be warned, though, that this book is thin on descriptive passages, and gives a largely impressionistic vision of Patagonia: it is more concerned with the region's idiosyncrasies and curious history than rendering a sense of what it's like to be there. Utterly unique: I recommend it highly.

Reserved for hellie

Thanks so much - have heard great things about this book.

Thanks for the laughs tonight - REALLY needed them!