On the Black Hill by Bruce Chatwin📖

Summary of On the Black Hill

“On the Black Hill” tells the life stories of Lewis and Benjamin, identical twin brothers who spend eighty years together on their remote farm, ‘The Vision’, in the borderland between Wales and England. Raised in a repressive family, the brothers live out their days in near isolation, bound by duty, habit, and the land that sustains them.

Reasons to read On the Black Hill

“On the Black Hill” offers a telling portrait of rural life in the Welsh borderlands, capturing both the beauty and the hardships of traditional farming in the first half of the twentieth century. The novel is praised more for its descriptions of landscape and country life than for its plotline. In 1982, “On the Black Hill” won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and the Whitbread Award for best first novel. It was adapted into a film in 1987. Its author, Bruce Chatwin, is best known for his travel writing (“In Patagonia”), but he was also an acclaimed novelist (“On the Black Hill”, and “Utz”, set in Prague). In 2008, The Times named Chatwin among the “50 Greatest British Writers Since 1945.”

Setting: Radnorshire (Wales, UK) and Herefordshire (England, UK)

“On the Black Hill” is set in the borderland between the black hills of Wales (Radnorshire) and the green hills of England (Herefordshire).

Original title: On the Black Hill

Year of publication: 1982

Nr of pages: 272