Volume 29, Number 21 & 22 · January 20, 1983
Make It Strange
By V.S. Pritchett
On the Black Hill
by Bruce Chatwin
Viking, 249 pp., $14.75
After the excellent book on his travels, In Patagonia, it is at first surprising to find Bruce Chatwin writing a novel about the small sheep farmers at home on the hills of the Welsh Border country of England. Sheep farming is, of course, the common link. In the nineteenth century large numbers of tough, poor, and exalted Welsh peasants migrated to Patagonia as if drawn to the isolation, the rains, the snows and hard conditions they knew at home and where they would be free of the mocking gaze and rule of the Sassenach conquerors. The people of On the Black Hill are part of the sturdy remnant who toiled and haggled at home.
Review, 2301 words
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