American novelist and short-story writer, poet, translator, classical music composer, and filmscorer Paul Bowles has lived as an expatriate for more than 40 years in the North African nation of Morocco, a country that reaches into the vast and inhospitable Sahara Desert. The desert is itself a character in The Sheltering Sky, the most famous of Bowles' books, which is about three young Americans of the postwar generation who go on a walkabout into Northern Africa's own arid heart of darkness. In the process, the veneer of their lives is peeled back under the author's psychological inquiry.



"It stands head and shoulders above most other novels published in English since World War II."



"[The Sheltering Sky] is one of the most original, even visionary, works of fiction to appear in this century."


Book Description
When The Sheltering Sky was first published in 1949, it established Paul Bowles as one of the most singular and promising writers of the postwar generation. Its startlingly original vision has withstood the test of time and confirmed Tennessee Williams's early estimation: "The Sheltering Sky alone of the books that I have . . . read by American authors appears to bear the spiritual imprint of recent history in the western world." In this classic work of psychological terror, Bowles examines the ways in which Americans apprehend an alien culture and the ways in which their incomprehension destroys them.The story of three worldly young travelers Port Moresby, his wife, Kit, and their friend, Tunner--adrift in the cities and deserts of North Africa after World War II, The Sheltering Sky is merciless in its evocation of the emotional dislocation induced by a foreign setting. As the Americans embark on an ill-fated journey through desolate terrain, they are pushed to the limits of human reason and intelligence by the unfathomable emptiness and impassive cruelty of the desert. Along the way, they encounter a host of enigmatic characters whose inarticulate strangeness seals the travelers off even more completely from the culture in which they are traveling, causing their fierce attachments to one another to unravel.This special fiftieth anniversary commemorative edition of Bowles's unforgettable first novel includes the original New York Times review by Tennessee Williams and a preface the author wrote for his first novel before he died in 1999.

FROM OUR EDITORS

The strange journey of a married couple and their best friend to a coastal city in North Africa and to the world of the great desert behind it: the Sahara, where civilization ends and the moral landscape of our own environment begins.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

After ten years of marriage, Kit and Port Moresby have drifted apart and are sexually estranged. Avoiding the chaos of Europe in the aftermath of the Second World War, they travel to the remote North African desert. Port hopes the journey will reunite them, but although they share similar emotions, they are divided by their conflicting outlooks on life. Kit fears the desert while Port is drawn to its beauty and remoteness. Oblivious to its dangers, he falls ill and they discover a hostile, violent world that threatens to destroy them both.

SYNOPSIS

A beautiful, yet disturbing, tale of two people traveling into the Sahara. Although the couple apear to be smart, independent travelers, they are not equipped to travel into the desert.Thus, each time hardship strikes, pieces of their comfortable lives and the identities they had constructed seem to peel away. The shifting sands and unforgiving sun are metaphors for the shocking and vulgar circumstances that befall them.

Brilliantly paced, the novel takes the characters through cycles much like those of an addict—from being dazed to being frenzied to being frozen. Despite the fact that some find The Sheltering Sky reminiscent of Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, the characters in this book ultimately have options.

FROM THE CRITICS

New Republic

Stands head and shoulders above most other novels published in English since World War II.

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