Paul Bowles
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Paul Bowles once said that a story should remain taut throughout, like a piece of string. That tense, stretched tone is the key to this collection of 17 eerie tales by the author best known for The Sheltering Sky. The Delicate Prey is dedicated: "For my mother, who first read me the stories of Poe." If Poe had lived in Mexico, and he'd had ice water running in his veins to counteract his feverish romanticism, he might have crafted something like these...
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The short fiction of American literary cult figure Paul Bowles is marked by a unique, delicately spare style, and a dark, rich, exotic mood, by turns chilling, ironic, and wry-possessing a symmetry between beauty and terror that is haunting and ultimately moral. In "Pastor Dowe at Tecaté," a Protestant missionary is sent to a faraway place where his God has no power. In "Call at Corazón," an American husband abandons his alcoholic wife on their...
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Set in Fez, Morocco, during that country's 1954 nationalist uprising, The Spider's House is perhaps Paul Bowles's most beautifully subtle novel, richly descriptive of its setting and uncompromising in its characterizations. Exploring once again the dilemma of the outsider in an alien society, and the gap in understanding between cultures-recurrent themes of Paul Bowles's writings-The Spider's House is dramatic, brutally honest, and shockingly relevant...
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In Let It Come Down, Paul Bowles plots the doomed trajectory of Nelson Dyar, a New York bank teller who comes to Tangier in search of a different life and ends up giving in to his darkest impulses. Rich in descriptions of the corruption and decadence of the International Zone in the last days before Moroccan independence, Bowles's second novel is an alternately comic and horrific account of a descent into nihilism.
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In the nineteenth century there flourished a peculiar breed of Englishmen-often the second sons of the aristocracy, or ambitious men from a lower class-who as soldiers, consuls and tea planters, were largely responsible for making England a great colonial power. Save for the fact that he is a staunch anticolonialist, Paul Bowles resembles these men in many respects. Like them, he appears to be happiest away from civilization as we know it; like them,...
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Travels is a thrilling anthology of the travel writings of Paul Bowles, author of the era-defining post-war novel The Sheltering Sky. The acclaimed essays in Travel-never before collected in a single volume-span more than sixty years and range from Bowles's early days in Paris to his time spent in Ceylon, Thailand, Kenya, and his expatriate life in Morocco. Insightful, exciting, and evocative, featuring original photographs throughout, Travels is...
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First published in 1962, A Hundred Camels in the Courtyard by American author Paul Bowles is a book comprising four tales of contemporary life in a land where cannabis, rather than alcohol, customarily provides a way out of the phenomenological world. Thus, of the men in these stories, Salam uses suggestions supplied by smoking kif to rid himself of a possible enemy. He of the Assembly catches himself up in the mesh of his own kif-dream and begins...
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Between 1987 and 1989, Paul Bowles, at the suggestion of a friend, kept a journal to record the daily events of his life. What emerges is not only just a record of the meals, conversations, and health concerns of the author of The Sheltering Sky but also a fascinating look at an artist at work in a new medium. Characterized by a refreshing informality, clear-sightedness, and passages of exquisite prose, this work records with equal fascination the...
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In this intense and brilliant book, Bowles focuses on Morocco, condensing experience, emotion, and the whole history of a people into a series of short, insightful vignettes. He distills for us the very essence of Moroccan culture. With extraordinary immediacy, he takes the reader on a journey through the Moroccan centuries, pausing at points along the way to create resonant images of the country, it's landscapes, and the beliefs and characteristics...
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On the terrace of an elaborate hilltop apartment overlooking a Central American capital, four people sit making polite conversation. The American couple - an elderly physician and his young wife - are tourists. Their host, whom they have just met, is a young man of striking good looks and charm. The girl, his mistress, is very young and very beautiful. Sitting there, watching the sunset, the Slades seem to be enjoying the sort of fortunate chance...
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This extraordinary collection of correspondence by Paul Bowles spans eight decades and provides an evolving portrait of an artist renowned for his privacy. From his earliest extant letter, written at the age of four, to his precocious effusions to Aaron Copeland and to Gertrude Stein, from his meditations on mescaline as relayed to Ned Rorem, to his intensely moving letters to Jane Bowles during her illness, In Touch fills in the lacunae left by previous...
16) Travels
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Travels is a thrilling anthology of the travel writings of Paul Bowles, author of the era-defining post-war novel The Sheltering Sky. The acclaimed essays in Travel—never before collected in a single volume—span more than sixty years and range from Bowles's early days in Paris to his time spent in Ceylon, Thailand, Kenya, and his expatriate life in Morocco. Insightful, exciting, and evocative, featuring original photographs throughout, Travels...
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A beautiful edition of a landmark of 20th Century literature, by acclaimed author Paul Bowles
In this classic work of psychological terror, Paul Bowles examines the ways in which Americans apprehend an alien culture--and the ways in which their incomprehension destroys them. The story of three American travelers adrift in the cities and deserts of North Africa after World War II, The Sheltering Sky is at once merciless and heartbreaking in its compassion....
18) Let It Come Down
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One of the most enigmatic artists of the 20th century, writer, composer and wanderer Paul Bowles (1910–1999) is profiled by a filmmaker who has been obsessed with his genius since age nineteen. Set against the dramatic landscape of North Africa, the mystery of Bowles begins to unravel in this poetic and moving documentary. Rare, candid interviews with the reclusive Bowles—at home in Tangier, as well as in New York during an extraordinary final...