Bruce Chatwin Death
Bruce passed away on January 18, 1989 at the age of 48 in Nice, France. Bruce's cause of death was AIDS (related complications).
When did Bruce Chatwin die?
January 18, 1989How did Bruce Chatwin die? What was the cause of death?
AIDS (related complications)How old was Bruce Chatwin when died?
48Where did Bruce Chatwin die? What was the location of death?
Nice, France
Bruce Chatwin Birthday and Date of Death
Bruce Chatwin was born on May 13, 1940 and died on January 18, 1989. Bruce was 48 years old at the time of death.
Birthday: May 13, 1940
Date of Death: January 18, 1989
Age at Death: 48
Bruce Chatwin - Biography
Bruce Chatwin, in full Charles Bruce Chatwin, (born May 13, 1940, Sheffield, Yorkshire, England—died January 18, 1989, Nice, France), British writer who won international acclaim for books based on his nomadic life.
In 1966 Chatwin abandoned a promising career as a director of Impressionist art at the auction firm Sotheby’s in London to study archaeology at the University of Edinburgh. From 1973 he worked for a time as a traveling correspondent for The Sunday Times (London), but he quit in 1976 to begin a pilgrimage through the Patagonia region of southern Argentina and Chile. The book In Patagonia (1977), based on his travels, won awards in Britain and the United States.
The Viceroy of Ouidah (1980; filmed as Cobra Verde, 1987) is a fictionalized biography of a Brazilian slave trader in 19th-century Dahomey. In On the Black Hill (1982; filmed 1988), which won the Whitbread literary award, Chatwin explored the lives of twin brothers on an isolated 20th-century Welsh farm. Chatwin’s most commercially successful work, The Songlines (1987), is both a study of Australian Aboriginal creation myths and a philosophical reverie on the nature of nomads. His last novel was Utz (1988; filmed 1992). What Am I Doing Here?, a collection of Chatwin’s essays, was published posthumously.
In 1965, Chatwin married Elizabeth Chanler, a young American working at Sotheby's in London. He had a number of homosexual friendships, including one with the writer Edmund White. Most of these were ephemeral, but he had a protected affair with an Australian whom one friend described as the male equivalent of the glamorous blonde on a man's arm. He was diagnosed H.I.V. positive and in the last years of his life was intermittently feverish.
