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That’s Where I Wanted to Go

On sale

11th February 2027

Price: £30

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Selected: Hardcover / ISBN-13: 9781472161130

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‘The undisputed master of the Latin American scene’ Norman Lewis, Daily Telegraph

‘I cannot think of any other foreign writer who has entered into the labyrinth of the politics of my country and acquitted himself so well’ Mario Vargas Llosa


‘Nicholas Shakespeare is one of those writers who can do anything’ Peter Craven, The Australian


‘An encompassing talent’ Thomas Keneally


That’s Where I Wanted to Go is a collection in the footsteps of Bruce Chatwin’s posthumous collection What Am I Doing Here (which became his best-selling hardback), Ian Fleming’s Thrilling Cities, and, most recently, Norman Lewis’s A Quiet Evening: the travels of Norman Lewis.

First-hand bulletins from the front lines of five continents, That’s Where I Wanted to Go not only records the last tremors of Empire but also a pre-internet world before the fall of the Iron Curtain. Taken together, these pieces form a riveting and unusual memoir of a writer praised by the Wall Street Journal as ‘one of the best English novelists of his time’.

Reviews

Thomas Keneally
An encompassing talent
Francis King, Literary Review
One of our dozen or so best
John Linklater, Sunday Herald
A world writer
Mario Vargas Llosa
I cannot think of any other foreign writer who has entered into the labyrinth of the politics of my country and acquitted himself so well
Norman Lewis, Daily Telegraph
The undisputed master of the Latin American scene
Gita Sereny, Observer
Almost steams with the author's understanding of South America and yet is somehow poetic and tender
Peter Craven, The Australian
Nicholas Shakespeare is one of those writers who can do anything