Utz, like Bruce Chatwin’s previous books In Patagonia (1977), The Viceroy of Ouidah (1980), On the Black Hill (1982), and The Songlines (1987), reflects his travels
Utz, like Bruce Chatwin’s previous books In Patagonia (1977), The Viceroy of Ouidah (1980), On the Black Hill (1982), and The Songlines (1987), reflects his travels about the world. Utz takes place mostly in Prague, and it features the life of Kaspar Utz, a minor Saxon baron, part Jewish, who has amassed a valuable collection of Meissen porcelain. The story begins with Utz’s death in 1974. The narrator, on a research trip to Prague in 1967, spends a little more than nine hours with Utz, meeting his servant Maria and his paleontologist friend Dr. Vaclav Orlik, and fills in the rest of the story.
Utz’s passion for rare porcelain dates from his childhood, when he acquires his first piece, a Harlequin, from his Jewish grandmother. During the 1930’s, thanks to the sale of family farmlands and the money his mother and grandmother have left him, h