Synopses & Reviews
A beautiful 65th anniversary paperback edition of the landmark literary work 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. It etches the limits of human reason and intelligence—perhaps even the limits of human life—when they touch the unfathomable emptiness and impassive cruelty of the desert.
Synopsis
A landmark of twentieth-century literature. Paul Bowles examines the ways in which Americans' incomprehension of alien cultures leads to the ultimate destruction of those cultures.
A story about three American travelers adrift in the cities and deserts of North Africa after World War II, The Sheltering Sky explores the limits of humanity when it touches the unfathomable emptiness and impassive cruelty of the desert.
Synopsis
Set in the aftermath of WWII and infused post-war existential angst, The Sheltering Sky (1949) tells a story of three Americans whose lives come unraveled in the harsh and unforgiving desert of North Africa. The manuscript was initially rejected Doubleday, which claimed it was "not a novel." And indeed the story and its characters look unconventional even today, more than fifty years after its original publication.
While students may be attracted to the novel's exotic desert setting and intrigued by the daring lifestyle of its two protagonists, Port and Kit, they may also be baffled by The Sheltering Sky's larger meaning, if it may be said to have one. Within the novel itself, Kit and Port represent two poles of
meaning, or the impulse to find or create meaning in their experience. For Kit, the world is suffused with significance, which reveals itself to her in signs and omens, and she tries to order her life according to her interpretation of these omens. For Port, the world has been drained of meaning. He sees the sky as sheltering, protecting them from what lies behind it, but when Kit asks him what does lie behind it, he replies: "Nothing. Just darkness." For Port, there is no God in the sky and no revelation lurking beneath the surface of things.
Readers of the book are thus given two examples of interpretive strategies: to find meaning in everything or in nothing.
Synopsis
The Sheltering Sky is a landmark of twentieth-century literature. In this intensely fascinating story, Paul Bowles examines the ways in which Americans' incomprehension of alien cultures leads to the ultimate destruction of those cultures.
A story about three American travelers adrift in the cities and deserts of North Africa after World War II, The Sheltering Sky explores the limits of humanity when it touches the unfathomable emptiness and impassive cruelty of the desert.
About the Author
Paul Bowles was born in Queens, New York, in 1910. He began his travels as a teenager, setting off for Paris, telling no one of his plans. In 1930 he visited Morocco for the first time, with Aaron Copland, with whom he was studying music. His early reputation was as a composer and he wrote the scores for several Tennessee Williams plays. Bowles married the writer Jane Auer in 1938, and after the war the couple settled in Tangier. In Morocco Bowles turned principally to fiction. The Sheltering Sky—inspired by his travels in the Sahara—was a New York Times bestseller in 1950, and has gone on to sell more than 250,000 copies. It was followed by three further novels, numerous short stories, nonfiction, and translations. Bowles died in Tangier in 1999.