 During his illness , Chatwin continued to write . Elizabeth encouraged him to use a letter he had written to her from Prague in 1967 as an inspiration for a new story . During this trip , he had met Konrad Just , an art collector . This meeting and the letter to Elizabeth served as the basis for Chatwin 's next work . Utz ( 1988 ) was a novel about the obsession that leads people to collect . Set in Prague , the novel details the life and death of Kaspar Utz , a man obsessed with his collection of Meissen porcelain . Utz was well @-@ received and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize . 
