On the Black Hillis an elegantly written tale of identical twin brothers who grow up on a farm in rural Wales and never leave home. They till the rough soil and sleep in the same bed, touched only occasionally by the advances of the twentieth century.

In depicting the lives of Benjamin and Lewis and their interactions with their small local community Chatwin comments movingly on the larger questions of human experience.

Bruce Chatwinwas born in Sheffield in 1940. After attending Marlborough School he began work as a porter at Sotheby's. Eight years later, having become one of Sotheby's youngest directors, he abandoned his job to pursue his passion for world travel. Between 1972 and 1975 he worked for theSunday Times, before announcing his next departure in a telegram: 'Gone to Patagonia for six months.' This trip inspired the first of Chatwin's books,In Patagonia, which won the Hawthornden Prize and the E.M. Forster Award and launched his writing career. Two of his books have been made into feature films:The Viceroy of Ouidah(retitledCobra Verde), directed by Werner Herzog, and Andrew Grieve'sOn the Black Hill. On publicationThe Songlineswent straight to Number 1 in theSunday Timesbestseller list and remained in the top ten for nine months.On the Black Hillwon the Whitbread First Novel Award while his novelUtzwas nominated for the 1988 Booker Prize. He died in January 1989, aged forty-eight.