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The Sheltering Sky

3.93 of 5 stars 3.93 · rating details · 9,179 ratings · 774 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, 352 pages

Published June 1st 2007 by Penguin Books (first published 1946)

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Jan 04, 2013 Steve aka Sckenda rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: Readers of Existential Literature; Desert Lovers and Nomads

Recommended to Steve aka Sckenda by: Modern Library

Shelves: 20th-century, africa, desert, morocco, modern-library-100, travel, colonialism, time-100

"A black star appears, a point of darkness in the night sky's clarity. Point of darkness and gateway to repose. Reach out, pierce the fine fabric of the sheltering sky, take repose." (229)

The Sahara Desert called unto them. It beckoned them deeper into its vast emptiness. They went. What were they running from? What were they seeking? What did they find?

Port Moresby and his wife Kit have come to Algeria to get away from the Second World War. But the large coastal cities of North Africa have beco...more "A black star appears, a point of darkness in the night sky's clarity. Point of darkness and gateway to repose. Reach out, pierce the fine fabric of the sheltering sky, take repose." (229)

The Sahara Desert called unto them. It beckoned them deeper into its vast emptiness. They went. What were they running from? What were they seeking? What did they find?

Port Moresby and his wife Kit have come to Algeria to get away from the Second World War. But the large coastal cities of North Africa have become too homogenized for Port’s taste, so the couple will travel to the desert communities deep in the Sahara.

Port sees himself as a citizen of the world, an enlightened nomad:

He did not think of himself as a tourist; he was a traveler. The difference is one of time. Whereas the tourist generally hurries back home at the end of a few weeks or months, the traveler belonging no more to one place than to the next, moves slowly, over periods of years, from one part of the earth to another. The tourist accepts his own civilization without question; not so the traveler, who compares it with the others, and rejects those elements he finds not to his liking. (6)

The certitude of infinite sadness is at the core of Port’s consciousness, “but the sadness was reassuring, because it alone was familiar.” (3) When Port looks at the sky, he sees a canopy of protection-- a sheltering sky:

The sky here’s very strange. I often have the sensation when I look at it that it’s a solid thing up there, protecting us from what’s behind. But what is behind? Nothing I suppose. Just darkness. Absolute night. (94)

Conversely, Kit is stymied by a perpetual terror. Every occurrence is an omen to her. She lives her life forever fretting some sign of impending doom. She looks beyond the sky to the darkness. Absolute night.

Paul Bowles left New York City and moved to Tangier, Morocco. In a sense, Bowles fled to the desert and there are similarities between the life of Bowles and Porter. The plot is simple and straightforward, and Bowles’ language is spare and clean like the desert. “The Sheltering Sky” conveys the attitude of postwar existential pessimism, and Modern Library and Time ranked this novel as one of the best novels of the Twentieth Century.

Are you a tourist or are you a traveler? Does the desert call you? What does its harsh landscape hint about the human condition? What do you see in the desert? God? Nothingness? If you don’t know the answer, your reaction to this book may teach you what your heart already knows.(less)

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Apr 01, 2008 Lara rated it 5 of 5 stars

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 taken by none other than the band The...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)

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Feb 16, 2008 trivialchemy rated it 5 of 5 stars · 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 effect on my li...more 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 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)

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Oct 04, 2008 Chip rated it 5 of 5 stars

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 Come Down), bu...more

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Jul 15, 2007 Jessica rated it 1 of 5 stars · 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 Sheltering Sk...more

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Feb 08, 2010 Whitaker rated it 3 of 5 stars · 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 block just too m...more 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 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)

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May 25, 2008 Amy rated it 4 of 5 stars · 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 deterioration of a marria...more

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Jul 17, 2011 S. rated it 2 of 5 stars

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, but unfort...more 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, 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)

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Dec 02, 2011 Angus rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

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

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, which is only two pages long. If I remember it right, it is something about waking up in a Northern African hotel room with the...more

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Jul 23, 2008 Sara rated it 3 of 5 stars

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

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Dec 04, 2007 Garrett rated it 4 of 5 stars 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 one of...more

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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 kno...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 was in a for...more
Feb 18, 2009 09:32pm

Jul 13, 2007 David rated it 5 of 5 stars · 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, perhaps not...more

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May 24, 2012 Kaitlyn Barrett rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: classics-of-obligation

Meh. For all the years that I’ve been thinking about this book and obsessing about parts of the movie, I found the actual text underwhelming and bewildering. I don’t understand why people would behave this way – especially the relationship between Port and Kit – and I don’t feel I got enough info to actually get it.

Bowles opens Pandora’s box at the end when Kit suffers a psychotic break and he writes it as a series of inexplicable choices made through pain and terror. If he really wanted to take...more

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Dec 28, 2008 Jennifer (aka EM) rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition 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--ahem--not in my early 20s.

B...more

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Jul 30, 2008 Chaz rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

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 gripping one...more

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May 30, 2008 Sara-Maria Sorentino rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

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 dismissiveness I missed a lot. N...more 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 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)

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Oct 29, 2008 Will Byrnes rated it 3 of 5 stars

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

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Aug 01, 2011 Peter rated it 5 of 5 stars

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 which civiliza...more

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Mar 05, 2013 Olga rated it 2 of 5 stars

I am really struggling with this one, I need all my mental determination to go on. The writing is unoriginal, the characters and their thoughts and words are cartoonish and silly. Their actions don't seem to make sense either so far. I think because the author had nothing actually to say, he keeps padding the pages with snapshots of scenery and mental ramblings which make me furious and are not nearly intriguing enough to fuel the novel. The book is obviously in love with itself and I feel like...more

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Oct 10, 2007 Amanda rated it 4 of 5 stars

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 watch the fu...more

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May 01, 2013 Bill rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: literary

Zombies in Love

Bowles, P. (1949). The Sheltering Sky. New York: Harper Perennial.

This post-WWII classic is similar in mood and tone to Camus’ L’Etranger. It is set in the Sahara of Northern Africa during the war, about 1940. A young, American married couple, Port and Kit, travel with their male friend, Tunner from town to town, village to village, in Algeria, mostly. They are footloose adventurers, not tourists. They have no return date, no agenda, no motivation, no interest in the local people,...more Zombies in Love

Bowles, P. (1949). The Sheltering Sky. New York: Harper Perennial.

This post-WWII classic is similar in mood and tone to Camus’ L’Etranger. It is set in the Sahara of Northern Africa during the war, about 1940. A young, American married couple, Port and Kit, travel with their male friend, Tunner from town to town, village to village, in Algeria, mostly. They are footloose adventurers, not tourists. They have no return date, no agenda, no motivation, no interest in the local people, customs, languages, food, geography, history – no interest in anything. They walk around like zombies, going nowhere, for no reason. They see nothing, think only of themselves and each other, come to no judgments about their travels. The “action” in the book rarely rises above eating, drinking, smoking, sleeping, walking and driving around, getting sick, getting hot or cold, and breathing.

Port and Kit might have loved each other once, but even that is not clear. What keeps them together is egocentric insistence by Port that they continue the nomadic life, for no particular reason, and Kit’s pathologically passive acquiescence. The characters are more like translucent ghosts than people.

What is the point of this novel then? Well, there is no point, and that is the point. The characters and the storyline are mere punctuation for the enveloping mood, and that mood is meaninglessness, emptiness, even nihilism. Even the title of the book is despairing: the sky does not, after all, shelter anyone from anything; it is the opposite of shelter. There is no shelter.

After the war, when Sheltering Sky was written, many intellectuals, stunned and disoriented by the monumental and senseless destruction, carnage, brutality, and irrationality they had just lived through, concluded that the very foundations of civilization had been exposed as delusions. There are no ideals that can withstand barbarism; there is no purpose to anything, no future to hope for. Nothing is worth anything and nothing means anything.

The vast, alien, underpopulated, and inhospitable Sahara is the perfect setting for a meaningless, featureless life, and these characters stumble through it like the post-war rag dolls many people felt like at that time. The exterior setting, arid, dusty and empty, perfectly mirrors the characters’ interior worlds. But how could anyone write 300 pages of nothing and make it interesting? Bowles does that, through the sheer force of his artistry, and that’s what keeps the pages turning. Some samples:

[Opening lines of chapter 1:] “He awoke, opened his eyes. The room meant very little to him; he was too deeply immersed in the non-being from which he had just come. If he had not the energy to ascertain his position in time and space, he also lacked the desire. He was somewhere, he had come back through vast regions from nowhere; there was the certitude of an infinite sadness at the core of his consciousness, but the sadness was reassuring, because it alone was familiar.”

“’Before I was twenty, I mean, I used to think that life was a thing that kept gaining impetus. It would get richer and deeper each year. You kept learning more, getting wiser, having more insight, going further into the truth--’ she hesitated.Port laughed abruptly. ‘And now you know it’s not like that. Right? It’s more like smoking a cigarette. The first few puffs it tastes wonderful, and you don’t even think of its ever being used up. Then you begin taking it for granted. Suddenly you realize its nearly burned down to the end. And then’s when you’re conscious of the bitter taste.’” (p. 159).(less)

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Mar 23, 2013 Maggie rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I had not really heard of this novel or author until recently, when I stumbled across Brandon Lee's last interview on the set of The Crow, where he mentioned a quote, and apparently it's now inscribed on his tombstone. I might have also seen that it was on the Modern Library's list of 100 best novels, but I had forgotten about it. So when it was one of the Kindle Daily Deals recently, I jumped at the chance to read it. The title of the novel and the beautiful quote that Brandon Lee had mentioned...more I had not really heard of this novel or author until recently, when I stumbled across Brandon Lee's last interview on the set of The Crow, where he mentioned a quote, and apparently it's now inscribed on his tombstone. I might have also seen that it was on the Modern Library's list of 100 best novels, but I had forgotten about it. So when it was one of the Kindle Daily Deals recently, I jumped at the chance to read it. The title of the novel and the beautiful quote that Brandon Lee had mentioned, seemed peaceful and uplifting, but when you really get into the themes of this thought provoking novel, it seems that the "sheltering sky" is only a thin veneer that hides a dark void behind it. The vision is quite bleak, dark, and disturbing. Port and Kit Moresby are an American couple who come to North Africa in hopes that this adventure can save their broken marriage, which is hanging by a thread. They invite along a friend, Tunner, who at times they are annoyed by and want to ditch behind. They believe that they are "travelers", and not "tourists". However, much of the time, they complain about the food and living conditions. They speak French, but very little of Arabic or the other local dialects. And yet, they come across the Lyles, a mother and son who are even more strange and obnoxious. Port and Kit wander from town to town, never really staying for very long in one place, and their trip gradually descends into sickness, death and despair, and madness. I think that Bowles uses Port and Kit, these Americans in a foreign land, to reveal some existential ideas about alienation and despair in the human condition. The desert is at once a beautiful but desolate and silent, dangerous and lonely place. In the towns, they walk down dark staircases and through mazes of narrow, disorienting passageways. Port is forever wandering, searching for something that he can't quite grasp, which parallels the Tea in the Sahara story. Kit is always running away from some fear of impending doom. In a place like the desert, where mile after mile of the landscape is identical, they seem frozen in time and one day passes after another, their only hope (our only hope in a world where the sheltering sky is only a thin veil holding back the darkness) is that famous quote: "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 that. How many more times will you watch the full moon rise? Perhaps twenty. And yet it all seems limitless." While we're still able, we can appreciate those small, precious moments of life and treasure them. I don't think that Port and Kit were able to truly do this, but it's a great thought. Their story was kind of difficult to get into at times, and somewhat difficult to understand because of all the philosophical musings, but it's well worth the read.(less)

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Mar 18, 2013 Al rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Paul Bowles had already established himself as an important composer when at age 39 he published The Sheltering Sky and became recognized as one of the most powerful writers of the postwar period. From his base in Tangier he produced globally ranging novels, stories, and travel writings that set exquisite surfaces over violent undercurrents. His elegantly spare novels chart the unpredictable collisions between "civilized" exiles and a Morocco they never grasp, achieving effects of extreme horro

...more

This Library of America Bowles set, the first annotated edition, offers the full range of his achievement: the portrait of an outsider who was one of the essential American writers of the last century. In addition to his novels-The Sheltering Sky (1949), Let It Come Down (1952), The Spider's House (1955), Up Above the World (1966)-and his collected stories-including such classics as "A Distant Episode" and "Pages from Cold Point"-they contain his masterpiece of travel writing, Their Heads Are Green and Their Hands Are Blue (1963). Throughout, Bowles shows himself a master of gothic terror and a diabolically funny observer of manners as well as a prescient guide to everything from the roots of Islamist politics to the world of Moghrebi music. With a hallucinatory clarity as dry and unforgiving as the desert air, Bowles sends his characters toward encounters with unknown and terrifying forces both outside them and within them.

From Library Journal

Though mostly associated with Tangiers, Bowles was born in Queens, NY, so his works qualify for inclusion in the Library of America. The publisher claims these are the first annotated editions of Bowles's works available. Along with the novels volume, Stories includes "The Delicate Prey," "A Hundred Camels in the Courtyard," "The Time of Friendship," "Things Gone and Things Still Here," "Their Heads Are Green and Their Hands Are Blue," among many others.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About the Author

Daniel Halpern, editor, is the editorial director of Ecco and has published several books of poems, including Something Shining.

(less)

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Mar 11, 2013 Chuck Jankowski rated it 2 of 5 stars

Someone on this website described this as "a poor man's Ernest Hemingway." I think that was being generous. I for one have grown tired of reading about the ennui of "lost generations," who all happen to be spoiled rich kids (Holden Caulfield, Brett Ashley, Tom & Daisy Buchanan, to name a few) who are constantly trying to find a "thrill" in life to replace actually being productive.

Hemingway gave Jake Barnes a reason to be miserable, but even he wasn't merely a lay-about like the others, and...more

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Jan 06, 2013 astried rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2013

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. I don't think I can honestly say that I like this book. It's one of those books where you wonder why you keep on reading, especially at the beginning where Port & Kit was playing so off-handedly with their relationship. They're supposed to be thinking so much about their true self and being reckless with other people. I suppose their sin is being young & well to do. There's nothing like having to earn your living to cure the silliness of youth. A funny thing, reading this I'd thought of...more I don't think I can honestly say that I like this book. It's one of those books where you wonder why you keep on reading, especially at the beginning where Port & Kit was playing so off-handedly with their relationship. They're supposed to be thinking so much about their true self and being reckless with other people. I suppose their sin is being young & well to do. There's nothing like having to earn your living to cure the silliness of youth. A funny thing, reading this I'd thought of Port as a jaded at least 40years old guy; not until the French lieutenant described his youth did I realized that Port most probably still his twenties. In fact I was rather confused reading this scene and thinking that the lieutenant is actually meeting Tunner instead of Port, I wonder why.

The second part was better with Port dying and all & there's this air of desperation around where it's really reason for it instead of chronic personal desperation. This is the part where I have to really control myself and not take a peek at the ending.

Then the third part came and at first I was cheering Kit for her bid of freedom until she relinquish it so easily. Then everything went pretty much down hill for me. The end is admirable just because she basically shows her finger to the world, but then again, if at the end of the day this is what we'll find out about Kit then it wouldn't matter much to me if the story ended right at the end of the part before it. At least I'll have the imagination of her having the same end as the 2 sisters having a tea in Sahara. But I guess Bowles couldn't resist the temptation of dashing the hope some people might have that a western woman can fare well alone in Maghreb. Not that I will be foolish enough to think that this could happen, money or no money.

Apropos the setting, I read this on account of being set in Morocco. I currently have this urge to get to know this country more. Rather too late and pointless, but still... Anyhow, Sahara is one thing I regret not having seen when I still got higher chance to. A city girl that I am, I don't think I'll survive being in it for a day or two, but I wished at least to see it from the edge. Besides, some days the thought of a complete desert silence seems to be very alluring compared to city bustle. (less)

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Dec 17, 2012 Stuart rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: modern-classics

“The Sheltering Sky” is a post World War II story about Port and Kit Moresby, a married couple from New York who are traveling in North Africa with their friend Tunner. At the start, the journey is an attempt by the couple to resolve their marital difficulties. Their ignorance of the dangers surrounding them, however, puts them on a path to oblivion, a journey that pits them against the desert, Arabs, French colonizers, a very unsavory mother/son combination, and their enigmatic selves.

Bowles ex...more

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Oct 22, 2012 [P] rated it 3 of 5 stars

Writing ¾ of a masterpiece is a dubious kind of achievement. The good significantly outweighs the bad of course, but the bad is more conspicuous in such exalted company. Furthermore, the bad here is very very bad indeed. The decline in quality in the final quarter of the book is so significant that if you told me that it was written by someone other than Bowles I would believe you with no qualms whatsoever.

I ought to point out that I don’t necessarily think that the quality of the prose decline...more Writing ¾ of a masterpiece is a dubious kind of achievement. The good significantly outweighs the bad of course, but the bad is more conspicuous in such exalted company. Furthermore, the bad here is very very bad indeed. The decline in quality in the final quarter of the book is so significant that if you told me that it was written by someone other than Bowles I would believe you with no qualms whatsoever.

I ought to point out that I don’t necessarily think that the quality of the prose declines, the prose itself is consistently wonderful throughout, especially at communicating the atmosphere of African towns. The story, however, not only comes off the rails, but, like in a cheesy summer blockbuster, falls on its side and blows up in spectacular fashion.

description

The Sheltering Sky is for the most part the story of a couple on their travels, one who embraces the experience and one who gives the impression of wanting to be “anywhere but here.” This is another marriage-in-crisis novel, and the unraveling of Port and Kit’s relationship I found wholly engaging and believable. It is also a novel about “foreignness,” about a confrontation with a landscape, culture, and customs that are alien to you, and about how an experience of “the other” can lead one into an existential exploration of the self, which is all very Heart of Darkness, but is extremely well done.

If The Sheltering Sky had remained focused on Port and Kit as a couple, and concluded naturally at the point at which their relationship became irrevocably sundered I would have given this 5 stars. However, what we actually get in the final quarter is only marginally less ridiculous than Carry On…Follow That Camel.

description

I won’t say too much and spoil it for first-time readers of the novel, but this section includes a dashing but dastardly prince(?), a harem, and a cunning plan. No shit. Not only that but there is also a sequence (and it’s a particular bone of contention with me that this idea seems to rear its ugly head with alarming frequency in so-called serious fiction) which seems to suggest that women are OK with rape and will ultimately fall for their attacker. UGH. Fuck off.

5 stars for the first ¾ + 1 star for the final quarter = 3 stars? (less)

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Sep 10, 2012 Rudolph Pascucci rated it 2 of 5 stars

I read this in preparation for a dinosaur expedition that we are planning for some time in the near future to Morocco. In the course of researching the culture I came across the name Paul Bowles and his alluringly titled "masterpiece", The Sheltering Sky. "His art far exceeds that of...the great American writers of our day" states Gore Vidal on the back cover. I can't agree. Not that I didn't find this a page turner for about two thirds of the book. It is at that point that Bowles decides to tak...more

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Jul 05, 2012 Christine rated it 4 of 5 stars

I think 3.5 stars is more accurate. I am somewhat conflicted on how to rate/review this book. The first 3/4 of the book was very engrossing. I found myself thinking about it while I was not reading it and looked forward to when I could pick it up again. Bowles' prose is stark yet philosophical at times and elegantly portrays the characters' isolation and despondency. The themes are interesting and examined well and throughout there are lovely passages and descriptions of the characters' motivati...more

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May 19, 2012 Realini rated it 5 of 5 stars

It happened to me often: Before finding out about the book, I get to see the movie...

It is the case with The Sheltering Sky- I saw part of the Bertolucci movie, which I did not enjoy, though I found the book brilliant, then I discovered that the book is included in The Top 100 Modern Library List...

The Sheltering Sky was a wonderful surprise for me: After two recent misfires with The Midnight's Children and The Decameron, I was afraid that I am losing my pleasure to read, the ability to concentr...more

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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 permanently in 1947,...more

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“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.” — 126 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.” — 50 people liked it

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