My rating:

add to my books

The Sheltering Sky

by Paul Bowles

3.91 · rating details · 5,296 ratings · 597 reviews

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

...more

Paperback, Harper Perennial Modern Classics P.S. Edition, 352 pages

Published September 1st 2005 by HarperCollins (first published 1949)

more details... edit details

Get a copy:

More…

There is a good chance some of your friends read this book. Sign in to see!

Friend Reviews

To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up.

Lists with This Book

Modern Library 100 Best Novels - The Board's List

30th out of 100 books — 14 voters

More lists with this book...

Community Reviews

(showing 1-30 of 8,767)

filter | sort: default (?) | rating details

Apr 01, 2008

Lara rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: desert, life-changing, heart-breaking

"Each man's destiny is personal only inso as it may resemble what is already in his memory."

This quote is from Eduardo Mallea, and it begins The Sheltering Sky with that strange act of framing that so many authors employ, using the words of others to summarize or introduce the feelings that they are about to try to invoke in their readers. Above this quote is another phrase: "Tea in the Sahara," a chapter title, now-familiar but difficult to place. This was take...more"Each man's destiny is personal only inso as it may resemble what is already in his memory."

This quote is from Eduardo Mallea, and it begins The Sheltering Sky with that strange act of framing that so many authors employ, using the words of others to summarize or introduce the feelings that they are about to try to invoke in their readers. Above this quote is another phrase: "Tea in the Sahara," a chapter title, now-familiar but difficult to place. This was taken by none other than the band The Police, to introduce their own work, a song of the same name that recreates a story from The Sheltering Sky. It's an interesting little web - and indicative, I think, of the kind of impact that this book seems to have on people, or at least on those who love it.

I did strange things because of this book. I bought leather-bound antique tomes written by T.E. Lawrence, and read them to a friend while wrapped in blankets and candlelight, hiding from a snowstorm, which we both pretended was sand and not ice. I became obsessed with the notions of breath and spirit that are espoused by the Touareg people of the Sahara desert. I planned films. I devoured the works of Isabelle Eberhardt, an early pioneer of female-gender-bending and exotic adventure. And finally, I bought a one-way ticket to Morocco to see Mr. Bowles, himself.

What happened after that is a long story, and a large part of my psychic history. Bowles died three days before I arrived, although Fate did land me at his wake, and I became friends with many of his, most notably the famous Moroccan novelist, Mohammed Choukri. I also ended up living in North Africa for about two years, and spending a good deal of time in the desert, undergoing indeed what Bowles translates as the baptism of solitude.

This is a long-winded way of saying that there is something special in this book, something that has the ability to get into you and never let you go. It makes you do things, it shakes you up and reminds you of emotions and fears that you had forgotten to give names to. And as the Mallea quote suggests, this book does nothing to you that you haven't already in some way done to yourself, or brings out nothing that wasn't already there, some other, wilder experience, some other collision with the real, and the you that you have forgotten or think you have lost.

For those who have watched or loved the film adaptation, I cannot speak to it as I've never been able to bring myself to see it. I am not a big fan of Bertolucci's work, although he does do some interesting things with silence. Bowles' comment on the film was something to the effect of, "How can you make a movie when all the action takes place inside people's heads?"(less)

like 23 likes

· see review

Feb 16, 2008

Isaiah rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: favorites

In my younger days, I sensed that this was a rudely under-appreciated book that, merely acclaimed, deserved inclusion within the canon of the Gods themselves (Hemingway, Melville, Joyce, McCarthy). More recently, I have realized that not the book qua narrative, but its singular intimacy with my person colored the profoundness of my love-affair with this novel. As a result, my review must be peculiarly subjective for someone so accustomed to the pretense of objectivity.

Whether its eff...moreIn my younger days, I sensed that this was a rudely under-appreciated book that, merely acclaimed, deserved inclusion within the canon of the Gods themselves (Hemingway, Melville, Joyce, McCarthy). More recently, I have realized that not the book qua narrative, but its singular intimacy with my person colored the profoundness of my love-affair with this novel. As a result, my review must be peculiarly subjective for someone so accustomed to the pretense of objectivity.

Whether its effect on my life resulted from the epoch in which I read it (adolescence) or a nascent affinity I can not know. Either way, the very themes over which Bowles obsesses are the same which motivate the several pathologies of myself as man and human being.

It's true that The Sheltering Sky is primarily a love story, yet one in which the desert itself -- its hajji, its pathogens, its sterile expanse -- serves as antagonist as much as the tension of refractory lovers. Bowles' position is thus one of the experientialist: that meaning derives from the experience, and without experience the life stands bereft of meaning.

But there is much more to be said. For though Port and Kit's love is brought into this world as a burden, the promise is that the very foreignness of the land is what will bring it to resolution. This is not the myth of the expatriate (that the foreign place will cure all domestic malaise) but a more general principle: that the longer one can not find that which one seeks within the familiar, the more likely it lies in some place strange and horrible.

And indeed they do find resolution, but not the one they knew themselves to be searching for. Instead, a resolution which leaves the reader as much as Bowles' protagonists haunted by the heaviness of love and chaos of the exotic.

Perhaps what drew me most into this world and its ethos is Bowles' style itself, which matches with unnerving certainty the psychology of his characters to their external circumstance. In this way, a breathtaking comprehensiveness is stitched by prose at once robust and feminine, Möbius in its intention, Attic in its certainty.

This correspondence between psychology and circumstance provides a veritable well of affect, both for the characters and the reader. As a consequence, The Sheltering Sky has not only inspired the sole piece of complete writing I ever authored, but assisted in authoring the much more sincere trajectory of my own experience.

Recommended. (less)

like 16 likes

· see review

Oct 04, 2008

Chip rated it

· review of another edition

Oh man oh man. Someday I will have to revisit this, as I seem to mention it to anyone or anything who is willing to listen. Has probably become my favorite book of all time: simultaneously capturing the utter loneliness of existence, and the strange beauty of the desert/and/or the foreign. Makes me want to travel, makes me want to stay home and hide under the covers...it's that good.

I've read almost all of Bowles' other stuff, and some of it comes close to this (especially Let it Co...more

like 10 likes

· see review

Jul 15, 2007

Jessica rated it

· review of another edition

Recommends it for: Old Men

I rarely don't finish a book. This is a personal tendency (obsessiveness) which cemented itself during forays into such tomes as Les Miserables (5th grade) and Tess of the D'Urbervilles (10th grade) in which the endeavor seemed like it would be fruitless, and then, ahoy! A beautiful gem on the sparkling sea surfaces, a hundred or so pages in, and I was rewarded for my patience...
So it pains me to report that not even the chance of such a obscured jewel could keep me interested in A Shelte...more

like 8 likes

· see review

Feb 08, 2010

Whitaker rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: modern-canon, 2010-read

Like a sweet-talking charmer, Bowles seduced me with his crystalline prose. His sentences whispered in my ear and nibbled my nape, erasing thought from my haze-addled brain.

Later, many days later, I came to with a throbbing headache and a sour taste in my mouth. The crystal turned out to be crystal meth and it had severely eroded my judgement. What I had taken to be beautiful and enticing was just a jaded street hustler peddling the same old weary goods that had been around the bl...moreLike a sweet-talking charmer, Bowles seduced me with his crystalline prose. His sentences whispered in my ear and nibbled my nape, erasing thought from my haze-addled brain.

Later, many days later, I came to with a throbbing headache and a sour taste in my mouth. The crystal turned out to be crystal meth and it had severely eroded my judgement. What I had taken to be beautiful and enticing was just a jaded street hustler peddling the same old weary goods that had been around the block just too many times: naive privileged Westerners seek the purity of the savage wilderness, only to be destroyed by the horror, the horror of the eternal Om.

Yes, I get it. The bleak landscape of the Saharan desert substitutes here for the bleak desert of the American suburban landscape (see, for example, American Beauty). Protective veneers are stripped away to reveal the isolation and alienation at the heart of Kit, Port and their relationship. I can even get why people might love it.

But what gets me is the notion that in this Bowles was somehow being hard-nosed, rejecting romanticism. It may perhaps be a rejection of a particular romantic notion that salvation via the Essential and the Real are to be found outside civilization (see, for example, Kerouac). But this view of the Other as that blind unfeeling un-West that shreds the corrupt deracinated white man is just disguised romanticism, a precious existentialist reading of civilization by someone who can afford to pooh-pooh it, who is not going to have to dodge murdering soldiers to get water or till a parched field to feed his family.

Make no mistake, I'm no apologist for the ills of rampant capitalist consumerism nor some fool lover of the anomie that is corporate life. But life is what it is. If you're going to go to Africa and not get your shots, you're a damn fool. And you'd be just as much a fool if you'd tried scaling the north-face of the Matterhorn in the nude, notwithstanding it's proximity to consumerist, luxury-stuffed St Moritz.

(Three stars: -2 stars for story, +5 for writing.)
(less)

like 18 likes

· see review

May 25, 2008

Amy rated it

· review of another edition

In this novel a husband and wife and a sorta friend of theirs are travelling around North Africa. It's the 1940s, so one has to contextualize the sometimes awkward/semi-racist descriptions of the "natives." Or if you aren't interested in giving the characters any leeway, that's okay too, but the book works very well as a portrayal of arrogant, neurotic Americans in a hostile, alien world.

A lot of shit goes down. At first you might think that you are just witnessing the det...more

like 5 likes

· see review

Jul 17, 2011

S. rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: read-in-2011

This is an ambitious novel about alienation, isolation and despair. The story revolves around the character of Port Moresby, who, in disillusioned response to WWII, rejects America and Europe, leaving NY for Africa with his wife Kit as well as an acquaintance named Tunner, whom they both dislike.

Port feels Africa is less marred by war, and aims to spend a long period of time there. It’s not that he would fit in, he just wants to escape, or disappear. He may hope to flee his emptiness...moreThis is an ambitious novel about alienation, isolation and despair. The story revolves around the character of Port Moresby, who, in disillusioned response to WWII, rejects America and Europe, leaving NY for Africa with his wife Kit as well as an acquaintance named Tunner, whom they both dislike.

Port feels Africa is less marred by war, and aims to spend a long period of time there. It’s not that he would fit in, he just wants to escape, or disappear. He may hope to flee his emptiness, but unfortunately it’s a very clingy travelling companion. While his grudge against his culture propels him abroad, removing whatever external irritations Port might find in New York, the desert confronts him with his own inner emptiness. Port seems to relish wallowing there, while dragging his wife along. She isn’t one to protest – despite her unhappy state Kit seems devoted to Port, she bends to him, she bites her tongue and she packs her bags and comes.

Other than facing the landscape’s reflection of one’s inner desolation, you can’t help but wonder what appeal Africa holds. Port, Kit and Tunner find mostly squalor – ferocious flies, pink hairless dogs, wailing babies covered in sores, garbage in hotels, and cafés that smell of urine. But Port doesn’t care about sight-seeing or how many stars a hotel has: he’s a “traveller,” not a “tourist.” And he is the engine for the whole unfortunate story, even though he does manage to take his leave midway through the book.

At the end of Book 1, Port visits a teahouse, where he gets the hots for a blind prostitute/dancer. Her expressionless face while dancing says to him, “A dance is being done. I do not dance because I am not here. But it is my dance.” That peace is very much what Port seems to want. He is also attracted to this particular dancer because her blindness means she cannot see him. She erases him.

It all goes downhill from there.

In general, I thought the writing of The Sheltering Sky was good and the themes were interesting and important and are generally themes I like. I would have taken a philosophical point of view if the offensive handling of Kit as a woman hadn’t pushed my feminist button so hard it still hasn't popped back out.

First off, I realize the book was written in that late 1940s, but the use of the word “girl” to describe Kit grated on me immediately. I could have chalked it up to the times and shrugged it off. Even her attachment to clothes and wearing lipstick didn’t seem to me unrealistic. And ... here comes the SPOILER so stop here if you don’t want to know more about the plot... When Port dies, Kit’s own “sheltering sky” collapses and she is confronted with herself pure and unmitigated. Again here I’d be inclined to read this as an existential story if it weren’t for what Kit turns out to be. I found it too much to take that after Port’s death she waves down a caravan to save her and goes on to enjoy being raped by two men, soon becoming a contented sex slave to one of them. Coming to her senses briefly, she escapes that fate too, only to screw the next available guy. I don’t like the message here – woman as neurotic, male-defined nymphomaniac. I disliked the double standard throughout the book, e.g. after Port stumbles home from sleeping with a prostitute he’s outraged when he suspects Kit slept with Tunner. I could rave on and on about this, but suffice it to say at this point, as a woman I was offended.
(less)

like 4 likes

· see review

Jul 23, 2008

Sara rated it

· review of another edition

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

like 5 likes

· see review

Dec 04, 2007

Garrett rated it

· review of another edition

Recommends it for: people interested in any sort of travel writing

This one reminds me much of both Greene and Maugham. The travelers in the Sheltering Sky are experienced, for sure, dedicated to really getting to know a place, hell-bent (literally) on getting the full experience, of living instead of touring. The swagger and confidence they have, the invincibility they feel, their sense of entitlement ultimately destroys them all in one way or another.
Bowles does an amazing job of describing the landscape (sub-Saharan Africa after WWII), the sickness of ...more

like 2 likes

· see review

Garrett This one reminds me much of both Greene and Maugham. The travelers in the Sheltering Sky are experienced, for sure, dedicated to really getting to kn...more
Dec 03, 2007 05:26pm

Catherine Yes, to the similar feelings between Bowels and Maugham. I read Maugham's "the moon and sixpence" immediately fowling “sheltering sky.” I ...more
Feb 18, 2009 09:32pm

Jul 13, 2007

David rated it

· review of another edition

i was all WOW! or maybe i was all WOWZY WOW WOW after i finished it. this quote will kill you. ""Because we don't know when we will die, we get to think of life as an inexhaustible well. Yet everything happens only a certain number of times, and a very small number really. How many more times will you remember a certain afternoon of your childhood, an afternoon that is so deeply a part of your being that you can't even conceive of your life without it? Perhaps four, five times more, pe...more

like 5 likes

· see review

Dec 02, 2011

Angus rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: all-time-100-novels, modern-library-100, blogged

Disclaimer: This is not a review. This may have spoilers. Read at your own risk. Visit original post at Book Rhapsody.

***

Intro

I remember announcing to a once bookish friend that I intend to read this right after finishing the book that I was currently reading at that time. It must be Gilead, since it is the book that I wrote about prior to this. I then went to the bathroom and when I returned, he gave me his approval.

He said he likes the opening chapter, w...more

like 2 likes

· see review

Dec 28, 2008

Jennifer (aka EM) rated it

Recommends it for: Diehard romantics and existential atheists

Shelves: for-the-desert-island, lousy-movies-from-books, hidden-gems

Forgot how much I loved this book. Love it. The richness of the character portraits, relationships, and existential themes; as well as the startling detail of the images are highlighted even more by knowing the ending.

Back with more ... heading into Part II.

12/28/08: A piece of writing by Donald Powell [link now dead-sorry!:] caused me to think about this book, and my very different response to it from when I first read it in my early 20s to 20 years later, when I am--...more

like 2 likes

· see review

Jul 30, 2008

Chaz rated it

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. Paul Bowles creates a terrifying and realistic view of humanity in this drama. The premise of the story is that three characters, Port, Kit and Tunner set out for the venture in the Sahara. They’re thirsting for adventure, and a freedom that they cannot find present in their everyday lives in New York City. They find it.
Twists, roundabouts and forks galore-this isn’t a traditional drama where hope is rekindled at the end or the greater good of humanity wins. It’s a sad story, but a grippin...more

like 1 like

· see review

May 30, 2008

Sara-Maria Sorentino rated it

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. update: very helpful article for sorting out my reactions to this book-Edwards, Brian T. "Sheltering Screens: Paul Bowles and Foreign Relations" American Literary History - Volume 17, Number 2, Summer 2005, pp. 307-33. Can be found in Project Muse database.

this book is highly praised, and I entered into the reading enthusiastically. The enthusiasm quickly tapered off into disinterest, wavering sometimes into disgust, sometimes into intrigue, but I feel like in my dismissi...moreupdate: very helpful article for sorting out my reactions to this book-Edwards, Brian T. "Sheltering Screens: Paul Bowles and Foreign Relations" American Literary History - Volume 17, Number 2, Summer 2005, pp. 307-33. Can be found in Project Muse database.

this book is highly praised, and I entered into the reading enthusiastically. The enthusiasm quickly tapered off into disinterest, wavering sometimes into disgust, sometimes into intrigue, but I feel like in my dismissiveness I missed a lot. Now I find myself unable to shake the story and even shelled out a few bucks to rent the Bertolucci film.

The disgust first: North Africa figures in mainly as a hazy but alluring backdrop for the existential crisis of Port and Kit--the jaded married couple, self-proclaimed 'travelers' rather than 'tourists', lured to unknown places for unknown reasons--and most readers I suspect, will come away with an exoticized picture, if any picture at all, of their location. I have yet to read critical commentary on the novel, but I'm guessing, especially with Said at one's disposal, that this book has gotten some shit, rightly so perhaps, for its orientalism. Although Port and Kit are set apart (as more critical, and less…American) from their companion Tunner and other Westerners they met on the trip, such as the Lyles, they and the author, insofar as there is a distinction, reproduce time and time again the blind arrogance of power and privilege. That being said, there is, if you can make it to the third section, a substantive meditation on cultural encounters, meaning, disintegration, time and the like to be found here, evoked by the vastness of the desert and sky in its glory and its horror--although I have the feeling that the depth of this can and has often been missed (perhaps even by Bowles himself. To the extent that I want to be generous to Bowles, the blatant eurocentrism in its blatantess (the Arabic of locals, mainly hotel workers, wasn’t translated, for example--such characters presumably having nothing to add in way of narrative propulsion outside of room key wielding and a little native color) was a deliberate technique, structured so as to reveal the readers' complicity too with such a gaze, for it is how they (and we through their interactions) see and don't see the place and themselves (and ourselves) that leads to their (and our) ruin. Port and Kit's self-absorption and self-alienation--and placed as protagonists we readers too are drawn to be absorbed and alienated by them, with them, in their little obsessions and hang-ups--is at the lonely exclusion of much else, and their unwieldy attempts to the contrary are futile at best, positively disastrous at worst, marred as they must be by travel's painful half-acknowledged impossibilities. Such centering, the strategy of spotlighting the powerful once again, I have come to think is an absolutely crucial project (if only perhaps to give me purpose) but, and maybe I am just wanting Bowles to do my work for me, the exposition of the encounter was so…one-sided, even if deliberately, so as to clothe the political brunt behind rather tepid philosophizing and decontexualized romance, the dullness of which being precisely what fiction, in its amenability to creative encounters, can led us away from. In compiling a comparative sketch of first/third-world relations, which I can’t help but want to do, this had nothing of the suggestive tone and aching search of works such as Heart of Darkness or the Pickup that so capture my attention.(less)

like 2 likes

· see review

Oct 29, 2008

Will rated it

· review of another edition

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

like 2 likes

· see review

Aug 01, 2011

Peter rated it

· review of another edition

Beautifully written and immensely engrossing, some passages speak truth in their descriptions of human existence and the nature of time. A particularly insightful passage I have "liked" as a quotation on this site. The book is largely about the effects of Western civilization, using Africa as a metaphor for the animal mind. One of the main characters eventually leaves civilization behind and joins the tides of the desert. Her transformation through this experience shows the way in whic...more

like 1 like

· see review

Oct 10, 2007

Amanda rated it

· review of another edition

decadently written and beautifully tragic...
"Because we don't know when we will die, we get to think of life as an inexhaustible well. Yet everything happens only a certain number of times, and a very small number really. How many more times will you remember a certain afternoon of your childhood, an afternoon that is so deeply a part of your being that you can't even conceive of your life without it? Perhaps four, five times more, perhaps not even that. How many more times will you w...more

like 3 likes

· see review

Jan 31, 2012

Joshua Frampton rated it

· review of another edition

Between the superbly paced narrative and the seething atmosphere of malevolence and danger, I found this extremely difficult to put down. Bowles is a masterful writer, in complete command of his structure and stylistic form. The characters are unsympathetic most of the time, flaunting their contempt and mistrust of the locals, complaining about conditions (I wouldn't want to travel with them), and treating each other like hell. Bowles manages a significant stylistic feat here however, weaving th...moreBetween the superbly paced narrative and the seething atmosphere of malevolence and danger, I found this extremely difficult to put down. Bowles is a masterful writer, in complete command of his structure and stylistic form. The characters are unsympathetic most of the time, flaunting their contempt and mistrust of the locals, complaining about conditions (I wouldn't want to travel with them), and treating each other like hell. Bowles manages a significant stylistic feat here however, weaving the perspective between the main characters to create an empathetic outpouring from the reader. It hit me anyway - yeah, these people are rubbish, but that is because they are desperately torn up with their own inner conflicts. Their attempts to reach out to each other fall flat; in short, a sharp reminder of how inevitably alone we are as human beings.

The unforgiving environment is rendered beautifully with sharp imagery. You can detect a malignant tension in each sentence. Bowles' prose tugs at you like a fishhook - a certain awareness of something horrible or terrifying around the next corner kept me enthralled as I turned each page. Bowles delivers with deft talent too, creating a very chilling and unique atmosphere in the process. In essence it is similar to a extremely well paced and engaging film - though Bowles too sometimes slips into beautiful philosophic reverie and reflection. Yes, I know it has been shared already, but this snippet in particular took my breath away.

- 'Death is always on the way, but the fact that you don’t know when it will arrive seems to take away from the finiteness of life. It’s that terrible precision that we hate so much. But because we don’t know, we get to think of life as an inexhaustible well. Yet everything happens only a certain number of times, and a very small number, really. How many more times will you remember a certain afternoon in your childhood, some afternoon that’s so deeply a part of your being that you can’t even conceive of your life without it? Perhaps four or five times more. Perhaps not even. How many more times will you watch the full moon rise? Perhaps twenty. And yet it all seems limitless.' (less)

· see review

Jan 28, 2012

Richard rated it

· review of another edition

Rating: A craven, self-preservationistic 2* of five

BkC8: Tedious twaddle.

When I'm right, I'm right.

The Book Report: Kit and Port Moresby (get the Australia/New Guinea colonial joke, huh? huh? How clever is Paul Bowles, right?) are not gonna make it as a couple. They just aren't. So, in time-honored rich-couple-in-over-relationship fashion, they Travel. They don't take a trip, or a vacation, oh perish forbid, they Travel. North Africa, they think, no one we know will...more

· see review

Jan 13, 2012

ميّ أحمد rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: روايات

رواية ساحرة !
لم أقرأ رواية تزخر بأجواء الشرق بجمال هذه الرواية ، كما يقول الناشر تبدو كلوحات الفنانين المستشرقين و يمكن لأي رسام مهتم ، أن يقرأ الرواية وهي بلا شك ستلهمه الكثير .
الروائي الأمريكي بول بولز قضى معظم حياته في بلاد المغرب حيث انتقل إليها في العام 1947 ومن الطبيعي أن يتأثر بأجوائها في كتاباته , حالما بدأتُ في القراءة تذكرُت أني قبل فترة قصيرة أنني قرأت رواية أبنوس والتي كتبها الروائي الفرنسي ألبرتو بانكث - فيكيروا والتي تقوم على فكرة إدانة الرّق وتدور أحداثها في صحراء أفر...more

· see review

Jul 24, 2011

Salma rated it

· review of another edition

قرأتها عام 2009 و كتبت حينها

رواية عن مغامرة ثلاثة أمريكيين رجل و زوجته و صديقهما في أرجاء صحراء المغرب العربي... الرواية طبعا تحمل الطابع الاستشراقي... و هي نموذجية باستشراقيتها: الفوقية الغربية... الانسحار بالغرابة و التوحش و البدائية الشرقية.. التقاطع الحسي بين الغربيين و الشرقيين... إلى آخر ذلك النوع من التصوير الغرائبي الذي يمتع الغربي بعوالم ذاك الآخر المختلف...0
لكن من التسطيح أن أقول أنها كذلك فقط... إذ أن فيها بُعدا آخر أعمق جعلها أكثر من كونها رواية استشراقية... و هو ال...moreقرأتها عام 2009 و كتبت حينها

رواية عن مغامرة ثلاثة أمريكيين رجل و زوجته و صديقهما في أرجاء صحراء المغرب العربي... الرواية طبعا تحمل الطابع الاستشراقي... و هي نموذجية باستشراقيتها: الفوقية الغربية... الانسحار بالغرابة و التوحش و البدائية الشرقية.. التقاطع الحسي بين الغربيين و الشرقيين... إلى آخر ذلك النوع من التصوير الغرائبي الذي يمتع الغربي بعوالم ذاك الآخر المختلف...0
لكن من التسطيح أن أقول أنها كذلك فقط... إذ أن فيها بُعدا آخر أعمق جعلها أكثر من كونها رواية استشراقية... و هو الوصف الهذياني للأفكار الداخلية لكل من الزوج بورت و الزوجة كيت... بدت غير منطقية و غير مفهومة و لكن تحديدا بدت كذلك لأنها أعمق الأفكار الداخلية... أعجبتني قدرة بول على قبضها بكلمات رغم أن غموضا معنويا كهذا يصعب توصيفه… و هذا الغموض عادة يُشعر به أكثر من أن يُفهم من قبل من اختبروه... و هذا ما جعلني أدخل فترة تجهم بسبب الرواية لأنها استطاعت اقتحام داخلي من دون تفكير و جعلتني أعيش هذيان الزوجين... 0
شاهدت الفيلم الذي جسد الرواية عام 1990

لا بأس به من حيث أنه يحملك لتلك الأجواء، لا أدري كيف كنت سأقيّمه لو لم أقرأ الرواية إذ كالعادة الرواية أجمل و أعمق بكثير بل و حتى أكثر احتشاما ... لكن الملفت للنظر في الفيلم هو أن الروائي بول بولز قد شارك بظهوره في بعض المشاهد، و روى بصوته بعض المقاطع... أعجبني في النهاية اللقاء بينه و بين البطلة كيت حين سألها هل أنت تائهة...0
أتساءل ما كان شعوره حينها... أعني حين تخيل أنه التقى بصنعته... و كنت سألت ما شعور كيت لولا أن الممثلة لم تكن كيت حقيقة... سيكون حينها أمرا
Stranger than Fiction >> (2006 film)(less)

· see review

Jun 25, 2011

Tom rated it

· review of another edition

A bewitching book in which the reader can get lost and confused for chapters on end. Three Americans, a restless couple and a male acquaintance, head out into rural Morocco as a vacation lark, but the mood darkens as they move deeper into the desert. Kit, the woman, is self-absorbed, seemingly bored by both her husband and her lover. At first the journey is merely uncomfortable. The characters grumble about the primitive hotel conditions, the suspicious natives and the incessant heat. Yet, stran...more

· see review

May 25, 2011

Tony rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: fiction-mainstream

Bowles, Paul. THE SHELTERING SKY. (1949). ****.
Early on, you suspect that you have entered a novel that has been over-rated since the day of its release. Then you are suddenly sucked into the desert regions of North Africa and sharing the lives of its protagonists. A young married couple from New York, along with a less than desired young man as a companion, has travelled to Africa in an attempt to reconcile their differences and, with any luck, put their marria...more

like 1 like

· see review

Feb 05, 2011

Chris rated it

Shivering in the antarctic morality of The Delicate Prey, I'm continually needled by the desire to reread TSS and discover if I would still care as little for it today as I did when I read it more than a dozen years ago. I came to it back then with a fair amount of anticipation, having read several raving reviews, especially from posters I had enjoyed on that usenet staple rec.arts.books; and the disappointment that Bowles engendered in me was crushing. Too distant a narrative; Yank characters a...more

like 1 like

· see review

Jan 01, 2011

Stephen rated it

· review of another edition

Many people have liked this book. I found it depressing.
It tells the tale of several American travelers, who are unconnected to each other, themselves, or anything else. They are on the move because they don't have any authentic core. Kit and Port are married, but it is an estranged affair. The people they meet are also estranged. Tunner, and the son and mother duo (maybe) are equally without roots.
As they grapple with what to do, they decide to go to the Sahara. Port dies. Ki...more

· see review

Dec 13, 2010

Adam rated it

· review of another edition

I don't understand the appeal of this book. Sure, the prose is beautiful, and the setting is interesting, but the characters will drive you insane. The Sheltering Sky is a book about three "friends" traveling in Saharan Africa. More than anything, I struggled to find sympathy for ANY of the characters. Port, the main character, thinks that traveling through the hellish Sahara desert will somehow save his marriage. Kit, his wife, is incredibly annoying and paranoid. Countless pages are ...more

· see review

Sep 25, 2010

Shawn rated it

· review of another edition

I kept asking myself “Why do I like this book?” as I was reading, and never really found an answer-- I just did. The third person omniscient view point was used differently than most novels imbibing it with an anomalous feeling akin to the 1900s north African desert landscape portrayed. The prose wasn’t particularly vivid, the plot not entirely engrossing, the author certainly didn’t write the characters to be genial. Symbolism abounds, though, and through the machinations of fate’s crucible lik...more

· see review

Apr 15, 2010

Ben rated it

· review of another edition

“All the tales are a variety of detective story,” wrote Paul Bowles of The Delicate Prey and Other Stories (1950), “…the reader is the detective; the mystery is the motivation for the characters’ behavior.” On this note, Bowles’ first novel, The Sheltering Sky (1949), feels aligned more with the seedy double-crossings of Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep (1939) than Ernest Hemingway’s uber-inebriated expatriate games in The Sun Also Rises (1925). But, unlike Chandler’s gritty noir pragmatism, T...more“All the tales are a variety of detective story,” wrote Paul Bowles of The Delicate Prey and Other Stories (1950), “…the reader is the detective; the mystery is the motivation for the characters’ behavior.” On this note, Bowles’ first novel, The Sheltering Sky (1949), feels aligned more with the seedy double-crossings of Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep (1939) than Ernest Hemingway’s uber-inebriated expatriate games in The Sun Also Rises (1925). But, unlike Chandler’s gritty noir pragmatism, The Sheltering Sky has an added patina of French decadence—the ménage a toi melodrama, the arabesque kif-smoking torpor, those La Règle du jeu class issues, which always create a comedic foil (right up until the moment someone is murdered)— and a great deal of the novel’s mystery is masked by these thematic layers of cultural pretension. Bowles’ characters are, after all, Americans, even if they do speak French and drink absinthe; the reader is left wondering what are these people doing in the Sahara? Why aren’t they—like Kit at one point suggests—conducting their sordid little episodes in the cafes of Venice?

Taking this necessary dishonesty (by extension, the metaphor of the sky sheltering them from God’s menacing scrutiny) as the major mystery and theme, Port is too on the nose with his claims of an aesthetic ideal—to find a place untouched by the war—to be trusted in his overt motives: he would have done better to start his quest in Australia or perhaps Siam. There is a more subtle mystery at play. The intrigues multiply. Soon, no one’s word can be trusted. The journey progresses to the interior of the desert, and it seems what they’re after is a stake in some pseudo-frontier; they’re pioneers making a claim on a virgin terrain, as Bowles reveals with Tunner and Kit, in this brilliantly concise paragraph:

They touched cups in a toast. There was no familiar clink—only a dead paper-like soun. “Here’s to Africa,” said Tunner, suddenly bashful. He had meant to say: “Here’s to tonight.”

By the end of the second book, further confusion is heaped onto the narrative with the death of the hero-apparent, Port. This sense of a narrative dead end is reinforced by the author as the perspective veers off first to track Port with the woman outside the city and again when he rides the bike outside of town after dinner. When Port dies long before the end of the novel, I felt a “lost in the wilderness” feeling. I was genuinely baffled and intrigued by Bowles’ decision. Beyond experiencing a “story reset” as Kit resolves into the real hero of our tale, the careful reader must realize just how deep the dishonesty of these relationships runs—it even includes the author—the plot shifts like the desert sands. In retrospect, the hints are numerous. Among my most favorite is the subplot of the lost passport, finding its way through the Sahara to the deceased owner. A further example is the stunning interplay between the desolate surroundings and an equally harsh interior view of Port at the close of Chapter XIII:

There was no moon; he could not see the desert in front of him, down
below—only the hard stars above that flared in the sky. He sat on the rock and let the wind chill him. Riding down to Boussif he realized that he never could tell Kit that he had been back there. She would not understand his having wanted to return without her. Or perhaps, he reflected, she would understand it too well.

This is an excellent application of a strength of the third person perspective, allowing the narrator to move fluidly between a declarative sentence like “She would not understand…” into an uncertain internal dialogue. The chapter ends with the end of this paragraph, giving the silence between this chapter and the next that much more weight, yet another narrative choice that feels inspired by the sparse landscape the characters are traversing.
Bowles offers this cryptic directive in the passage on Port’s death: “Reach out, pierce the fine fabric of the sheltering sky, take repose.” This seems to be the prime motive behind the desert fever dream into which the final book devolves, but few of the fine details that supported the first two books show up in the last book, making the plot feel more exploitative than mysterious. The details I am thinking of are those of the native music or more particularly those like the chicken given to Kit as a defense against scorpions or even in a broader sense the excellent descriptions of place and climate, running through the first two books. In this way, the pace of the last book feels hurried, which I suppose could give the plot a frantic quality, but as the situations demand more and more suspension of disbelief those anchoring details could have served to root the reader back in the story. This becomes especially crucial as more and more free agency is stripped away from Kit.

Chapter XVI offers a good example of how a mysterious detail can work to add credence to an estranged plot. Port has strayed away from the settlement on a walk and he passes a ruined building with a tree growing inside. The branches are hung “with hundreds of rags, regularly torn strips of cloth…” Port is curious and, approaching the ruin finds a man sitting beneath the tree “bound with ancient bandages.” But, it isn’t until he returns to the ruin on his way back to town that it occurs to him what this mysterious arrangement means. “The sudden thought struck him that the man must have a disease.” This revelation not only answers the mystery of the ruined building with the tree growing out of it, it further discloses the imperfections of the lens which Bowles has trained on the indigenous culture as well as revealing something about the state of Port’s mind. Further than that even, such a detail builds trust between the reader and the author, providing a reference point to the surrounding action. As the narrative ends with Kit reduced to a piece of luggage to be carted out of the desert, so ends Bowles’ application of his own theory of storytelling. We lose the thread of Kit’s motives to her lack of motivation, and what was once a crucial existential mystery becomes quite predictable.(less)

· see review

Mar 21, 2010

carl theaker rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: modern-library-100

Written right after WWII, this book is a precedent for the coming beat and hippie movements. The attempt to reject what one is, and attempt to adapt to something; in this case the desert ways, that one cannot be.
The descriptions of the desert landscapes and environs are poetic.

Port, the initial protagonist, moans his way through the story trying hard to be different.

Port's soulless wife, Kit can only reflect his disenchantments, till she gets a chance to be h...more

· see review

Feb 28, 2010

Alli Rense rated it

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

· see review

« previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 … 292 293 next »

new topic
Discuss This Book

There are no discussion topics on this book yet. Be the first to start one »

Recommend it | Stats | Recent status updates

combine
Other Editions (23)

More editions...

Videos About This Book

Add a comment

Genres

Cultural > Africa

48 users

Classics

42 users

Literature

35 users

Novels

34 users

Travel

17 users

Book Club

16 users

Contemporary

9 users

Literature > American

8 users

Literature > 20th Century

7 users

Literary Fiction

6 users

See top shelves...

Readers Also Enjoyed

About Paul Bowles

Paul Bowles grew up in New York, and attended college at the University of Virginia before traveling to Paris, where became a part of Gertrude Stein's literary and artistic circle. Following her advice, he took his first trip to Tangiers in 1931 with his friend, composer Aaron Copeland.

In 1938 he married author and playwright Jane Auer (see: Jane Bowles). He moved to Tangiers permanen...more

More about Paul Bowles...

Books by Paul Bowles

More…

Share This Book

Facebook Twitter Your website

Pin It

Trivia About The Sheltering Sky

8 trivia questions

More quizzes & trivia...

Quotes from The Sheltering Sky

“Death is always on the way, but the fact that you don't know when it will arrive seems to take away from the finiteness of life. It's that terrible precision that we hate so much. But because we don't know, we get to think of life as an inexhaustible well. Yet everything happens a certain number of times, and a very small number, really. How many more times will you remember a certain afternoon of your childhood, some afternoon that's so deeply a part of your being that you can't even conceive of your life without it? Perhaps four or five times more. Perhaps not even. How many more times will you watch the full moon rise? Perhaps twenty. And yet it all seems limitless.” — 65 people liked it

“How many more times will you remember a certain afternoon of your childhood, some afternoon that's so deeply a part of your being that you can't even conceive of your life without it? Perhaps four or five times more. Perhaps not even that. How many more times will you watch the full moon rise? Perhaps twenty. And yet it all seems limitless.” — 24 people liked it

More quotes…

Groups That Shelved The Sheltering Sky

Constant Reader

2861 members

last activity 0 minutes ago

shelf: read

A Novel Idea: a NYC Bookclub

354 members

last activity 18 de Ene 20:48

shelf: read

Around the World in 80 Books

330 members

last activity 0 minutes ago

shelf: read

title link	preview: The Sheltering Sky
avg rating	preview: The Sheltering Sky Goodreads rating: 3.91 (5296 ratings)
small image	preview: click here [close]
med image	preview: click here [close]
BBCode	[url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/12053.The_Sheltering_Sky?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book][img]http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1166491048m/12053.jpg[/img][/url] [url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/12053.The_Sheltering_Sky?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book]The Sheltering Sky by Paul Bowles[/url]

The Sheltering Sky

Friend Reviews

Community Reviews

Readers Also Enjoyed

Share This Book

Share This Book on Your Website