During the Second World War, Chatwin and his mother stayed at the home of his paternal grandparents, who had a curiosity cabinet that fascinated him.

Among the items it contained was a "piece of brontosaurus" (actually a mylodon, a giant sloth), which had been sent to Chatwin's grandmother by her cousin Charles Amherst Milward.

In a cave in Chilean Patagonia, Milward had discovered the remains of a giant sloth, which he later sold to the British Museum.

[3] In 1972, he interviewed the 93-year-old architect and designer Eileen Gray in her Paris salon, where he noticed a map of the area of South America called Patagonia, which she had painted.

In a sense this construction with its frequent use of digression, rather than a linear structure, mirrors one of the underlying themes of the work as a whole: a meditation upon wandering and nomadism in human life.

Chatwin's route takes him from Buenos Aires south through Argentina as far as Ushuaia, and thence to Punta Arenas, Puerto Natales and the Cueva del Milodon in Chile.

"[13] For In Patagonia Chatwin received the Hawthornden Prize and the E. M. Forster Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.