First edition, second impression (reprinted in the year of publication). Octavo. Original black cloth boards with bright gilt lettering to the spine. The book is in near-fine condition with perfectly sharp corners and clean, unmarked cloth. Binding is remarkably tight, straight, and square. Pages are exceptionally crisp, clean, and bright throughout with no internal markings, inscriptions, or foxing. The original pictorial dust jacket is in near-fine condition with vivid colouring and virtually no shelf wear. It has been neatly price-clipped at the front flap fold but shows no tears, chips, creasing, or fading. A beautifully preserved, highly collectible copy of Chatwin's brilliant final novel, which was shortlisted for the 1988 Booker Prize.

Summary Utz is an elegant, spare novel that follows the enigmatic life of Kaspar Utz, an art collector surviving in Prague during the Cold War. Despite the crushing restrictions of Nazi occupation and the subsequent Communist regime, Utz manages to amass an extraordinary private collection of over one thousand delicate Meissen porcelain figurines inside his tiny two-room flat. Though permitted to travel to the West each year, Utz refuses to defect because he cannot bear to abandon his porcelain, remaining a psychological captive to his treasures. Unfolding after Utz's funeral through the recollections of an unnamed narrator, the novel serves as a profound meditation on the nature of obsession, the price of survival, and art as a form of secret rebellion against totalitarian tyranny.