Cohn Thubron
The most memorable book of my year, Bruce Chatwin's The Songlines (Cape, £10.95), is distinguished by that least Brit- ish of traits: intellectual passion. A mélange of fiction, travel and anthropolo- gy, it develops into a unique study of nomadism — of all human restlessness.
I admired, too, the collection of Gavin Young's Observer articles, Worlds Apart (Hutchinson, £14.95). Wry and stylish, these pieces are steeped in sympathy for the persecuted — whether the remote Nagas of Assam or Roman families in terror of kidnap — and nobody has written more movingly about the plight of Viet- namese civilians.
To these I must add John Hemming's Amazon Frontier (Macmillan, £18.95), the second in his magisterial trilogy on the decimation of the Brazilian Indians by the Portuguese. It is hard to see how this three-volume oeuvre will ever be super- seded — a work of formidable scholarship and unobtrusive compassion.
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