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The Songlines (Vintage classics)
by: Bruce Chatwin
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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 910 EAN: 9780099769910 Edition: New edition ISBN: 0099769913 Label: Vintage Languages: Manufacturer: Vintage Number Of Pages: 304 Publication Date: November 28, 1998 Publisher: Vintage Studio: Vintage Features:
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Average Rating: 
List Price: £8.99 Amazon.co.uk's Price: £5.71 You Save: £3.28 (36%)Prices subject to change. Used Price: £0.85 Third Party New Price: £3.10 |
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Editorial Review:
Product Description:
The songlines are the invisible pathways that criss-cross Australia, ancient tracks connecting communities and following ancient boundaries. This is an account which recalls the authors' travels across the length and breadth of Australia seeking to find the truth about the songs and unravel the mysteries of their stories.
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.
Average Rating:
Rating:
- flatters to deceiveIt starts so well, but doesn't go anywhere. It threatens to give us an insight into Aboriginal culture; but in the end it is merely the scrapbook of a privileged Englishman who, through a rather dilettantish programme of travel and reading, has come up with a sheaf of speculations about man's primeval spirituality and psychology. Some are interesting, a lot are woolly and rather questionable, some are plain wrong.
He even tells us the reaction he's hoping for from an awestruck world: ... Read More
Rating:
- Personalised Outback experienceChatwin's skill in conveying the experience of his travels, the breath of daily existence, is masterfully portrayed in The Songlines. The Songlines are the traditional pathways across Australia followed by aboriginals as they literally sing their way through their native country, passing from one tribal homeland to another, acknowleding the occupation rights of each whilst, in effect, securing safe passage by recounting their own ancestry. Chatwin exposes both the helpers and do-gooding hinderers of ... Read More
Rating:
- A very huma bookThis book by Bruce Chatwin is a rare pleasure, written by a man truly interested in all the peoples of the world including their culture, language, arts and metaphysics. This time Chatwin went to Australia to attempt to understand the very complex system of Aboriginal religious structures called songlines. As far as I can see from this book songlines are the connections in song of one part of the country to another part, each practised by the people who live there with neighbours sharing the "song". ... Read More
Rating:
- Outstanding bookSonglines is an outstanding book. No wonder many of my mates had to read it at school. It's taken me 25 years to catch up with them but I'm glad I finally got round to it. It combines some gripping anecdote and tale of adventures with some very erudite philosophical discussion, or rather musings, and opportunity to learn about nomadic cultures and the aboriginal australians
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- Beautiful storyThis is an amazing book that gives you a great insight to the lives and history of the Aboriginals
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