In Patagonia

Bruce Chatwin's first book recounts his travels through Patagonia, at the southern end of South America, which he reached late in 1974. He spent six months there gathering the stories of people who had come from elsewhere, and framed the trip as a search for a scrap of giant sloth skin like the one he had seen as a boy in his grandparents' cabinet. The text is split into 97 separate sections whose digressions mirror its interest in wandering and nomadic life. Its subjects range from Butch Cassidy's log cabin and descendants of Welsh settlers to striking workers, anarchists and what became of the native peoples. Published in 1977, it includes fifteen of Chatwin's own black-and-white photographs.

Richard Branson put it on his list of 65 books to read in a lifetime.