Initially his role was to suggest story ideas and put together features such as "One Million Years of Art," which ran in several issues during the summer of 1973. M. Michel * Asmus Petersen * Isolde Schaad * Barbara Kerneck * Bernhard Streck * Regina Schmeken * Julius Krebs * Konrad Paul Liessmann * Katharina Kaever * Marko Martin * Reinhard Kaiser * Ina Hartwig * Boris Groys * Harald Eggebrecht * Ingomar von Kieseritzky * Christiane Grefe * Horst Kurnitzky].

We begin this introduction to Medievalism: Key Critical Terms with a tribute to Leslie Workman and Kathleen Verduin's achievements because the struggles they faced in bringing academic recognition to medievalism studies – tensions among “professionals” and “amateurs,” Western Europeans and “Others”; debates about “pastism” and “presentism,” memory and subjectivity; deconstructions of the concepts of authenticity, authority, and the academic disciplines and institutions reliant on them – reflect the development of the field as a whole. Some of Chatwin's critics did not think he succeeded in The Songlines with this approach, but others applauded his effort at an unconventional structure. Nicholas Shakespeare said that the dismal sales caused Chatwin to pursue a completely different subject for his next book. News of Chatwin's AIDS diagnosis first surfaced in September 1988, although the obituaries at the time of his death had referred to Chatwin's statements about a rare fungal infection. A visit in December 1965 to the Hermitage in Leningrad sparked his interest in the field of archaeology.What tempers the ominous undertones of the story is the merging of the high and the low, elements of the grotesque, and the stories – within the overarching narrative – that draw on legends, alchemy, Christianity, and history. The questions about the veracity of Chatwin's writing are compounded by the revelation of his sexual orientation and the true cause of his death.

Whilst in the West, Utz often considers defecting but he would be unable to take his collection with him and so, a prisoner of his collection, he is unable to leave. His view is that a lot of the problems of the world today don’t come down to race, black and white, but they’re actually down to rich and poor.

Un'ultima annotazione va alla scrittura colta e raffinata di Chatwin: amo i libri che fanno conoscere nuovi mondi e insegnare nuove cose; amo ancor di più i libri che sanno stimolare il lettore ad affrontare nuove letture: La montagna incantata di Thomas Mann, La signora col cagnolino di Cechov, e ancora Zweig, Schnitzler, e per finire L'immoralista di André Gide: la mia piccola collezione dopo la lettura di questo romanzo. The narrator’s preoccupation with disintegration of this kind extends itself to his philosophical musings on things, images, porcelains: ‘Do your porcelains demand their own death? Born in 1940, he was employed by Sotheby's to work at their art department and quickly became their expert on antique and impressionist pieces, known for his ability to discern forgeries; he eventually became the director. Utz is a collector of Meissen porcelain and finds a way to travel outside the Eastern Bloc to acquire new pieces.