My rating:
add to my books
Loading...
Points in Time: Tales from Morocco
by
Paul Bowles
In this intense and brilliant book Bowles focuses on Morocco, condensing expreience, 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 resona
...morePaperback, 92 pages
Published
October 31st 2006
by Harper Perennial
There is a good chance some of your friends read this book. Sign in to see!
sign in »
Friend Reviews
To see what your friends thought of this book,
please sign up.
This book is currently not featured on any Listopia lists.
Add this book to your favorite list »
Community Reviews
(showing
1-30
of
94)
The pieces included in Points in Time are brief and dreamlike, and entirely effective in painting a historical portrait of Bowles' adopted homeland, Morocco. Although written twenty-five years ago, these short prose poems are surprisingly effective at exploring the divide between Islam and the West, and do so without any overt moralizing on the author's part. As always, Bowles is a prose stylist of the first order, and the crystalline nature of his writing is all the more effective at these sh...more
Lauren
added it
Snippets of Morocco. Bowles has a way of being too abrupt when he concludes a story, but it reminds me of Middle Eastern fairy tales I read as a child, and maybe that's the point. The lack of sentiment in the story of the beautiful Jewish girl who marries a Muslim man and later runs away from him, only to be beheaded, renders its very telling as flat, emotionless---yet, comic?
Though not my cup of tea, Bowles work is unique enough to keep one turning pages. It's a short read, 89pages of descriptive writing and originality - in every sense of the word.
view 2 comments
A very creative and interesting (though somewhat disjointed) short book. Great for those interested in Morocco and who are fans of Paul Bowles' somewhat morbid style.
To be honest, I'm not really sure what this brief work is...poetry? vignettes? fables? Whatever it was, I enjoyed the way I felt when I read it, as when listening to a good piece of music I can't really define.
series of vignettes remarkably lucid and accurate picture of morocco through many different perspectives
Leslie Roberts
is currently reading it
...another book to start the year. Splendid...
a quick rip through sultan's mysterious marrakech
Yet again i was just not impressed by Paul Bowles. The book is interesting in that it is like poems, short stories, essays...etc all rolled in to one. I just feel like he smokes too much kif! He begins to make interesting points and calls upon the spiritual side, then ends with something trivial if he even eer concludes his points. The main point here is that Paul Bowles is not for me...
I really enjoyed this, as a combination of history and literature. You get a good feel for Morocco with these little vignettes. I definitely want to read more of his works.
Elisa
marked it as to-read
Kirstie
marked it as to-read
Alicia
marked it as to-read
Meter
added it
Nada
marked it as to-read
There are no discussion topics on this book yet.
Be the first to start one »
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...
In 1938 he married author and playwright Jane Auer (see: Jane Bowles). He moved to Tangiers permanen...more
Share This Book
No trivia or quizzes yet. Add some now »
