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The Sheltering Sky

Paul Bowles

3.91 · Rating details · 24,802 ratings · 1,765 reviews

In this classic work of psychological terror, Paul Bowles examines the ways in which Americans apprehend an alien culture--and the ways in which their incomprehension destroys them. The story of three American travelers adrift in the cities and deserts of North Africa, The Sheltering Sky is at once merciless and heartbreaking in its compassion. It etches the limits of huma ...more

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Paperback, Penguin Red Classics, 342 pages

Published June 1st 2007 by Penguin Group (first published 1949)

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Aug 14, 2015 Jeffrey Keeten rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: travel, book-to-film

"He did not think of himself as a tourist; he was a traveler. The difference is partly one of time, he would explain. Whereas a 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."

Before meeting Port Moresby, I always thought of myself as a traveler, but after one particular late night discussion accompanied by inebriation, interrupted by ...more

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Sep 25, 2018 Jim Fonseca rated it really liked it

Shelves: american-authors, french-north-africa, psychological-novel

“On the Road” in North Africa, published eight years before Kerouac’s classic. A 30-ish American married couple and a male friend are traveling in the French colonies right after the end of World War II at a time when the US State Department advised people NOT to travel there because of rampant disease and the disintegration of social conditions and of law and order.

The first half of the book focuses on the husband; the second half on the wife. (view spoiler) ...more

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Oct 23, 2017 Michael rated it it was amazing

Hypnotic, searing, terrifying, I first read this when I too was living in North Africa--in Egypt, to be precise--and it utterly shattered me. I recognized something of myself and my fellow expats in the thoughtfully self-centered and naive travelers depicted here, and something of the merciless cruelty of the desert I was never far from. The prose style isn't elaborate, but it isn't stark either, and the best I can describe it is to say that it weaves quite a spell, opening a slight yet horrifyi ...more

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Jun 02, 2020 Guille rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

“Alguien le había dicho alguna vez que el cielo esconde detrás la noche; que protege al que está debajo del horror de lo que hay arriba.
— ¿De lo que hay detrás?
— Sí.
— ¿Pero qué hay detrás? —preguntó Kit con un hilo de voz.
— Nada, supongo. Solamente oscuridad. La noche absoluta.”

Una novela terrible y hermosa, una historia triste cargada de escenas atroces, una funesta búsqueda existencial, un viaje al infierno de uno mismo dentro de un brutal choque de culturas.

“Creo que los dos tenemos m

“Alguien le había dicho alguna vez que el cielo esconde detrás la noche; que protege al que está debajo del horror de lo que hay arriba.
— ¿De lo que hay detrás?
— Sí.
— ¿Pero qué hay detrás? —preguntó Kit con un hilo de voz.
— Nada, supongo. Solamente oscuridad. La noche absoluta.”

Una novela terrible y hermosa, una historia triste cargada de escenas atroces, una funesta búsqueda existencial, un viaje al infierno de uno mismo dentro de un brutal choque de culturas.

“Creo que los dos tenemos miedo de lo mismo. Y por una misma razón. Nunca hemos conseguido, ninguno de los dos, entrar en la vida. Estamos colgando del lado de afuera, por mucho que hagamos, convencidos de que nos vamos a caer en el próximo tumbo.”

Port y Kit, un matrimonio en horas bajas lo suficientemente ricos como para permitirse el lujo de ser viajeros, esos afortunados seres que parten sin definir previamente los sitios por los que pasarán ni decidir el momento en el que volverán a casa, llegan al Sahara con el fin de encontrar o de encontrarse o descubrir algo que ni ellos son capaces de precisar. Él tenía una débil esperanza de que aquellas culturas milenarias, todavía no contaminadas por la civilización occidental, pudieran proporcionarle respuestas, aunque no estuviera muy seguro de cuáles eran las preguntas. Ella estaba convencida de que él necesitaba que ambos compartieran “la soledad y la cercanía de las cosas infinitas”, que solo participando de la misma esperanza podrían volver a amarse y, por ende, salvarse. Dos personas que se necesitan sabiendo en el fondo que ninguno podrá proporcionar al otro lo que quiere y precisa y de que toda posibilidad de amor desapareció hace mucho tiempo.

“… a pesar de estar dispuesta a llegar a ser lo que él quisiera, había algo que Kit no podía cambiar: el terror estaba siempre dentro de ella, dispuesto a asumir el mando. Era inútil pretender lo contrario. Y así como ella era incapaz de sacudirse el miedo de encima, él era incapaz de romper la jaula que había construido mucho tiempo atrás para salvarse del amor.”

Pero no está al alcance de todos encontrar lo que se busca. Es una gran ilusión creer que estamos al mando, que podemos ser y conducirnos de la forma que queramos y deseemos, qué ilusión es creer que somos libres. Nadie elige sentir el vacío de Port, nadie desea el espanto de querer penetrar en el interior de algo y asumir que no hay nada donde se pueda penetrar (“la diferencia entre algo y nada es nada”), nadie desea ese infierno al que, sin embargo, se aferra desesperadamente porque es lo único que tiene. Como se dice en un momento de la novela:

“Aunque esa glacial ausencia de vida era la base de su infelicidad, se aferraría siempre a ella porque era también el centro mismo de su ser, en torno al cual se había construido.”

Como tampoco Kit quiere ser dominada por los terrores que anidan en su interior, unos terrores que la obligan a establecer categorías de presagios que la permitan hacer frente, aun de forma precaria, a las circunstancias de la vida diaria. Unos terrores que la llevarán a pagar un precio altísimo por conseguir evitar el angustioso sentimiento de responsabilidad, por conseguir que de ella desaparezca toda posibilidad de esperanza, por sentir la seguridad de que el futuro no será otra cosa que una inacabable continuación del presente, que…

“ningún acto que uno cumpliera o dejara de cumplir podía cambiar en lo más mínimo el resultado; que era imposible de todos modos cometer un error y, por lo tanto, imposible lamentarlo o, sobre todo, sentirse culpable”.

Quiero terminar con un párrafo que me impactó, unos pensamientos de Kit que sacados de su contexto puede que no les digan nada y que incluso piensen lo que no es. Pero, si llegan a leer el libro, estoy seguro de que experimentarán el espanto que a mí me produjeron.

“Cuando él subía los peldaños del estrado, abría las cortinas, entraba y se recostaba a su lado para iniciar el lento ritual de desvestirla, las horas que había pasado sin hacer nada cobraban todo su significado. Y cuando él se iba, el delicioso estado de agotamiento y plenitud le duraba mucho tiempo: permanecía despierta, bañada en un aura de felicidad despreocupada, estado que rápidamente llegó a considerar natural y que, como una droga, se le volvió indispensable.”

Y no será el único momento de horror con el que tendrán que vérselas. Lean, lean. ...more

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Mar 27, 2016 Steven Godin rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, america-canada, favourites

This has destroyed me!, an utterly devastating work of immense power where the frailties of life both physically and emotionally are pushed to the very limits in a hostile, dangerous and unforgiving land.
Having settled in Tangier in the late 40's Paul Bowles uses his knowledge and experiences of French North Africa to startling effect. American couple Kit and Port Moresby have a marriage that is disintegrating and feel a trip abroad could help repair their relationship, so to avoid a ravaged Eur This has destroyed me!, an utterly devastating work of immense power where the frailties of life both physically and emotionally are pushed to the very limits in a hostile, dangerous and unforgiving land.
Having settled in Tangier in the late 40's Paul Bowles uses his knowledge and experiences of French North Africa to startling effect. American couple Kit and Port Moresby have a marriage that is disintegrating and feel a trip abroad could help repair their relationship, so to avoid a ravaged Europe following the second world war decide to travel through Algeria with their friend Tunner in tow, who clearly has some strong feelings for the beautiful Kit, things were never going to work out as hoped. There are Train journeys and bus rides through stunning but harsh landscapes with deserts, valleys, and rugged terrain where the unrelenting heat of the sun is a constant factor during the days, but it's when staying in the small towns where the reel problems start to arise, with general bickering, kit's uncomfortable mood towards their surrounding taking hold and Port disappearing into the night, as couples go it only seems likely they will drift further apart with no signs of happiness on the horizon. Slowly an uneasiness starts to creep in, with figures lurking in the shadow's of dark passageways, strange looks from locals they can never be certain about, with fly's buzzing, dogs barking, small children crying, there is a building paranoia, and Paul Bowles does make everything out in a stark, desolate, but realistic way similar to say Cormac Mcarthy, so if your looking for joy it does not exist here, as there were a few passages of writing in particular quite early on of such bleakness I had to go over them again as just couldn't believe my eyes, so he does not exactly portray a place where one would wish to hang around for too long. While the first half reads like a travel novel this would only go on to set the scene for when events take a turn into something of almost unbearable tensions that has quite frankly left me shattered.

...more

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Sep 05, 2015 Vessey rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 4-stars, romance

SPOILERS

“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 of your childhood, some afternoon that’s so deeply a part of your being that you can’ ...more

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Aug 18, 2013 Darwin8u rated it it was amazing

Shelves: 100-mccaffery, 100-modern-library, 2015

“How fragile we are under the sheltering sky. Behind the sheltering sky is a vast dark universe, and we're just so small.”
― Paul Bowles, The Sheltering Sky

description

Paul Bowles masterpiece reminds me of some alternate, trippy, version of Fitzgerald's Tender Is the Night, but instead we see the other side of the Mediterranean. Tangier and the deserts of North Africa take the place of the South of France. A different love triangle exposes different forms of loneliness, madness, love, and existential expats ...more

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Mar 30, 2008 Lara Messersmith-Glavin rated it it was amazing

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 "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?" ...more

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Aug 21, 2017 Julie rated it it was amazing

Shelves: out-of-africa

The story opens with a young married couple and an attractive male companion, on an adventurous rendezvous in Northern Africa.

Oooooh, how scintillating. . . how very, very scintillating. Starry skies, the soft curves of the sensuous desert in the backdrop. . .

Within just a few pages I had cast the movie. My film version of this story was going to star Ralph Fiennes-as-English Patient, Joseph Fiennes-as-Shakespeare and, well. . . naturally, me. I had already decided that, if one of the Fiennes b ...more

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Dec 02, 2015 Perry rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: mina-favoritböcker

The One Book That Made Me Feel as if I was Hypnotized*
“How fragile we are under the sheltering sky. Behind [it] is a vast dark universe, and we're just so small.”

I felt genuinely hypnotized by Paul Bowles' The Sheltering Sky, a lush and lyrical novel following a married couple and their male friend (they're "travelers," they say, not "tourists") as they wonder aimlessly through the desolation and harshness of the cities and deserts of North Africa shortly after WW II.

Within the novel is an affec ...more

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Apr 15, 2017 Robin rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 2017, literary-fiction, american

Sensual Existentialism in the Sahara

4.5 stars

Someone once had said to her that the sky hides the night behind it, shelters the person beneath from the horror that lies above.

Married couple Port and Kit Moresby, in a physically and emotionally distant relationship, are traveling through northern Africa with their friend Tunner. Rejecting America and Europe in post WWII disgust, these "travellers" (not tourists, Port is adamant about the difference) hope to find meaning in the mystery of the S ...more

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Jan 12, 2020 Paul rated it did not like it

Shelves: hated-it

“A novel of alienation and existential despair” written just after the Second World War. I think I was supposed to like this: I didn’t.
It is essentially about three Americans wandering around North Africa and the Sahara just after the war. Kit and Port Moresby are the centre of the book, a married couple travelling; their friend Tunner is with them for part of the journey. Bowles is very caught up with the difference between a tourist and a traveller, he spent his later life living in North Afri “A novel of alienation and existential despair” written just after the Second World War. I think I was supposed to like this: I didn’t.
It is essentially about three Americans wandering around North Africa and the Sahara just after the war. Kit and Port Moresby are the centre of the book, a married couple travelling; their friend Tunner is with them for part of the journey. Bowles is very caught up with the difference between a tourist and a traveller, he spent his later life living in North Africa:
“He did not think of himself as a tourist; he was a traveler. The difference is partly one of time, he would explain. 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. Indeed, he would have found it difficult to tell, among the many places he had lived, precisely where it was he had felt most at home. Before the war it had been Europe and the Near East, during the war the West Indies and South America”
There is a very early indication that the whole is not going to be a cheerful travel romp or a clear-sighted cultural analysis or even a critique of colonialism when Port talks about “infinite sadness at the core of his consciousness”. Yep, we’re going to be navel-gazing and reflecting on how tragic we travellers are. To give Bowles his due, there is no sense of romance about the travel, it’s all pretty grim.
There is a sort of love triangle between Port, Kit and Tunner which is partially hinted at (especially between Port and Tunner).
One of the problems with this is attitude towards the general population. Bowles in his writings shares his feelings about Moroccans, “The Moroccan, educated or otherwise, simply does not believe in germs”. There is an underlying racism. There are plenty of colonialist clichés. Even some of the minor western characters have interior lives, the French colonial soldiers and administrators. The Moroccans are not given that privilege.
As for the attitude to women; Kit is a collection of stereotypes based on some rather disturbing male fantasies (spoilers ahead). The rape scene is an example: Kit immediately falls in love with her rapist (cue tropes about handsome “dusky” males and no really means yes). So in love is she that she allows some other bloke to rape her as long as the first bloke is there. I’m probably missing some irony here, but this was just awful.
Bowles was frequently derogatory about his adopted country, “thought is not a word one can use in connection with Morocco”. He frequently uses words like “purely predatory”, “essentially barbarous” and “childlike”. He also was very influenced by the “Hamitic hypothesis” that everything of value in Africa came from the Hamites, a Caucasian race who were superior to all the races to the south (nothing to do with skin colour of course!!!). These sort of ideas permeate this book.
I haven’t even touched on the attitudes to mental health! How does this stuff become so revered?
...more

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Jan 25, 2010 Whitaker rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: z_2010-read, fiction-1900-1950

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 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.)
...more

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Jan 28, 2012 Richard Derus rated it it was ok

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 be there so we won't have to ...more

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Oct 17, 2017 Kinga rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: pub-1949

Jane Bowles, Paul Bowles’ wife, used to call him (among other things) “Gloompot”. I wonder how she got that; he seemed like such a cheerful guy.

“The Sheltering Sky” is a story of two (sometimes three) American drifters, who consider themselves “travellers” (rather than primitive tourists, you know), in search of something in North Africa – themselves? The meaning of it all? But end up, of course, losing themselves completely for they didn’t realise they are just a sum of social conventions, bel Jane Bowles, Paul Bowles’ wife, used to call him (among other things) “Gloompot”. I wonder how she got that; he seemed like such a cheerful guy.

“The Sheltering Sky” is a story of two (sometimes three) American drifters, who consider themselves “travellers” (rather than primitive tourists, you know), in search of something in North Africa – themselves? The meaning of it all? But end up, of course, losing themselves completely for they didn’t realise they are just a sum of social conventions, beliefs and rituals. And once the sun dries it up, all of it flakes away and “the sheltering sky” cannot shelter them from the emptiness inside them.

The main couple, Port and Kit, in their sexless but not entirely loveless marriage, resemble somewhat Paul and Jane’s unorthodox marriage (they only tried sex for about 1.5 year, after which she went on to sleep with women, he mostly with men, but they remained devoted to each other). And of course, Paul Bowles knows Sahara because he lived in its vicinity most of his life and infected his characters with the yearning for the desert. Personally, the endless sandy dunes never held much appeal to me but reading this beautifully written book almost convinced me that there was some value in the solitude of Sahara.

Like the characters in the meta-story ‘Tea in Sahara’, told to Port by a prostitute, Kit and Port keep looking for some illusive thing, that unspecified perfection that might be behind the next dune. What really propels Port forward is the fact he finds himself in constant psychological discomfort in every single place he is, so he tries to outrun himself. Kit, on the other hand, tags along hunted (and haunted) by bad omens she sees everywhere (you can tell the old girl is about to lose it).

As I mentioned, the writing is generally beautiful, and the characterization is also wonderful, but that doesn’t mean Bowles isn’t occasionally prone to bombastic, existentialist phrases such as “humanity is everyone but yourself” or something in that vein – I haven’t noted the exact quote. However, I do have a soft spot for such borderline pretentious existentialism. And Bowles is good at pacing. He was a composer first and the pacing of this book reminds me of a classical piece that start lazily and gently, gets a little intense in the middle and ends with chaotic cacophony.

I liked it much better than any Hemingway I’ve read but I appreciate it might not be for everyone. If the book isn’t for everyone, the moral of it is: get your travel vaccinations, kids. It might be that the entire cohesion of your being hinges on that.
...more

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May 24, 2008 Annet rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: have-to-read-again, dark, classics, tough

Every once in a while you come across a book which is beyond 5 stars. For me it hasn't happened that much. But this is one of them for me. the last one I rated this way was The Road by Cormac McCarthy. This book is mysterious, intriguing, dark, dangerous, exceptional , loving.... and I have to read it again soon to fully take in all of this beautiful story. It made a deep impression. ...more

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Jan 26, 2008 trivialchemy rated it it was amazing · 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 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. ...more

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Sep 23, 2015 Brian rated it really liked it · review of another edition

I think I have a reasonable amount of time separating me from September of last year when I read this book for a second time. My wife and I were on a 10 day trip to Morocco and I suggested that we read The Sheltering Sky in tandem. Bowles tale of existential dread and Western culture collision with the desert and denizens of North Africa was supposed to be a fictional journey to parallel our actual one. It wasn’t.

Bowles’ now relatively famous distinction between a traveler and a tourist is an ar I think I have a reasonable amount of time separating me from September of last year when I read this book for a second time. My wife and I were on a 10 day trip to Morocco and I suggested that we read The Sheltering Sky in tandem. Bowles tale of existential dread and Western culture collision with the desert and denizens of North Africa was supposed to be a fictional journey to parallel our actual one. It wasn’t.

Bowles’ now relatively famous distinction between a traveler and a tourist is an artifice. It is part of the genius of this novel in that the Reader takes Bowles position on traveler/tourist and then watches to see how the three American characters behave according to Bowles’ rules, all the while reflecting on how differently I would behave. Another important difference between tourist and traveler is that the former 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. How quaint a notion, offered so early in the novel. Read to see how American civilization frays at the edges beneath that sheltering sky; watch what happens when the so called “traveler” rejects elements not to his liking.

We finished reading the novel and discussed it over dinner. The next morning we would leave for three days in the Atlas mountains with the Berbers. Our conversation weaved between our thoughts on Kit, Moresby and Tunner and our excitement of the impending unknown spending time with another culture, completely off the grid and out of our comfort zone. Life held a different plan for us, however, and the next morning we were frantically trying to find a western hospital with a medical emergency that was no joke. Within minutes our Western Bubble was pierced – we were no longer in the beautiful hotel with room service and candlelight dinners, we were in a taxi with a driver that spoke no English rushing to a Marrakesh hospital in a place no tourist nor traveler would ever choose to be. This day also happened to be the Eid al-Fitr celebration, so the hospital had minimum staff and a waiting room filled to capacity. Nobody spoke English, my monoglotism shaming me yet again. My wife needed immediate medical attention, French and Arabic were only spoken at the intake desk, and all these Marrakeshians also trying to get admittance are looking at me like I’m from another planet. I was losing my patience, I was frightened, I realized that in that moment there was nothing that any part of my Western civilization could offer me to help. I was experiencing a brutal intersection with Bowles’ narrative; I was the clueless American in North Africa, the fifty year span between Bowles’ characters and me might as well have been the same day experience. For I had done as Kit did attempting to build a pathetic little fortress of Western culture in the middle of the wilderness.

Moresby asks himself if any American can truthfully accept a definition of life which makes it synonymous with suffering. I don’t know whether to call myself a traveler or a tourist, but as I continue to visit other places on the planet and meet people from other cultures I attempt to brook my life filters to learn from them. I don’t know suffering, not the way that most people that have lived – are living – have. The Sheltering Sky is a fine introduction to the beginning of that conversation, especially for Americans that travel.

Kit mentions in Book Three that someone once told her that the sky hides the night behind it, that it shelters the person beneath from the horror that lies above.

What is going to shelter us from everything beneath the sky? ...more

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May 16, 2020 Roman Clodia rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Before her eyes was the violent blue sky - nothing else. For an endless moment she looked into it. Like a great overpowering sound it destroyed everything in her mind, paralysed her. Someone has once said to her that the sky hides the night behind it, shelters the person beneath from the horror that lies above. Unblinking, she fixed the solid emptiness, and the anguish began to move in her. At any moment the rip can occur, the edges fly back, and the giant maw will be revealed.

This is like a ...more

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Jun 14, 2007 Jessica added 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 Sheltering Sk ...more

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Jun 26, 2011 Sarah rated it it was ok

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 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.
...more

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Nov 20, 2018 Raul Bimenyimana rated it it was ok

When books come recommended to us by people whose taste we highly respect, even before we read the very first word, they already take a life of their own molded by our expectations. At times, we're lucky and the book does meet and even surpasses what we expected from it, and at times such as now, it is a disappointment.

This story follows three American travellers trotting around North Africa at a period after the Second World War. This book was written (and is also set) before decolonization beg When books come recommended to us by people whose taste we highly respect, even before we read the very first word, they already take a life of their own molded by our expectations. At times, we're lucky and the book does meet and even surpasses what we expected from it, and at times such as now, it is a disappointment.

This story follows three American travellers trotting around North Africa at a period after the Second World War. This book was written (and is also set) before decolonization began and before the Civil Rights Movement in the United States began getting attention, so perhaps it comes as no surprise that some of the characters are deeply anti-semitic and racist, especially the character Mrs. Lyle. Arabs are treated with suspicion and condescending, Jews with contempt and Negroes with slur words. Interesting also is what Africa seems to represent in the story:

"Outside in the dust was the disorder of Africa, but for the first time without any visible sign of European influence, so that the scene had a purity which had been lacking in the other towns, an unexpected quality of being complete which dissipated the feeling of chaos."

Of course a trope of the colonial period and the literature written by Western writers at the time (and in some incidents even to this date), is African disorder, a thing inexpressible, dangerous but alluring, which in this case is required to rid the protagonists of the moral crises they are facing and which in turn leads to destruction.

That aside, I think this book failed in its attempt at analysis into human nature and moral stagnation of post Second World War American expatriates; Maugham's The Razor's Edge and Baldwin's Giovanni's Room, I believe expressed this better. What I think was aimed to be philosophical sounded trite and unconvincing. Bowles however, writes of North African terrain and skies with incredible colourful description, and that I felt, was among the few good things about the book.

I expected something illuminatory given the praise I had heard for the book but was left feeling as though I had missed something, and perhaps I have, although I do not think so. ...more

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Apr 01, 2008 Chip rated it it was amazing

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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Jun 24, 2011 Edita rated it it was amazing

Shelves: my-favourite-books, paul-bowles

He did not look up because he knew how senseless the landscape would appear. It takes energy to invest life with meaning, and at present this energy was lacking. He knew how things could stand bare, their essence having retreated on all sides to beyond the horizon, as if impelled by a sinister centrifugal force. He did not want to face the intense sky, too blue to be real, above his head, the ribbed pink canyon walls that lay on all sides in the distance, the pyramidal town itself on its rocks, He did not look up because he knew how senseless the landscape would appear. It takes energy to invest life with meaning, and at present this energy was lacking. He knew how things could stand bare, their essence having retreated on all sides to beyond the horizon, as if impelled by a sinister centrifugal force. He did not want to face the intense sky, too blue to be real, above his head, the ribbed pink canyon walls that lay on all sides in the distance, the pyramidal town itself on its rocks, or the dark spots of oasis below. They were there, and they should have pleased his eye, but he did not have the strength to relate them, either to each other or to himself, he could not bring them into any focus beyond the visual. So he would not look at them.

***
The landscape was there, and more than ever he felt he could not reach it. The rocks and the sky were everywhere, ready to absolve him, but as always he carried the obstacle within him. He would have said that as he looked at them, the rocks and the sky ceased being themselves, that in the act of passing into his consciousness, they became impure. It was slight consolation to be able to say to himself: "I am stronger than they." As he turned back into the room, something bright drew his eye to the mirror on the open door of the wardrobe. It was the new moon shining in through the other window. He sat down on the bed and began to laugh.

***
She looked out at the windswept emptiness. The new moon had slipped behind the earth's sharp edge. Here in the desert, even more than at sea, she had the impression that she was on the top of a great table, that the horizon was the brink of space. She imagined a cubeshaped planet somewhere above the earth, between it and the moon, to which somehow they had been transported. The light would be hard and unreal as it was here, the air would be of the same taut dryness, the contours of the landscape would lack the comforting terrestrial curves, just as they did all through this vast region. And the silence would be of the ultimate degree, leaving room only for the sound of the air as it moved past. She touched the windowpane; it was ice cold. The bus bumped and swayed as it continued upward across the plateau.
*
Before her eyes was the violent blue sky-nothing else. For an endless moment she looked into it. Like a great overpowering sound it destroyed everything in her mind, paralyzed her. Someone once had said to her that the sky hides the night behind it, shelters the person beneath from the horror that lies above. Unblinking, she fixed the solid emptiness, and the anguish began to move in her. At any moment the rip can occur, the edges fly back, and the giant maw will be revealed. ...more

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Sep 27, 2014 Mariel rated it liked it

Recommends it for: the sky here's very strange

Recommended to Mariel by: tea in the sahara

The desert- its very silence was like a tacit admission of the half-conscious presence it harbored.

The dog's dead eye twitches like nails and hair curling on a grave. Ancient symbols of trickster rabbits depict that stolen cereal tastes better. I have a long stick to prod the poor doggy for some answers. He's the only creature in sight with a memory of life. Wrestling with the strange inhabitants sound closer to where you could go.

My sister told me that I was unfair complaining that some books The desert- its very silence was like a tacit admission of the half-conscious presence it harbored.

The dog's dead eye twitches like nails and hair curling on a grave. Ancient symbols of trickster rabbits depict that stolen cereal tastes better. I have a long stick to prod the poor doggy for some answers. He's the only creature in sight with a memory of life. Wrestling with the strange inhabitants sound closer to where you could go.

My sister told me that I was unfair complaining that some books shrink me to the couch and talk the walk. I think she said something like I knew in the first place what I knew from books. I know that I could make my world bigger by going between the lives in stories and discovering their rhymes in my own. My recognition of suspicions and patterns had to have walked the Bambi in pages. Sometimes taken out back and put out of their misery. I don't think she's wrong, exactly. So I've been thinking about this in the back of my mind as a bone. Paul Bowles could out-walk the run of death drums of too much psych weight by the background noise. The music that lives this. The people could try and hold your body in front of theirs to ward off the meaningless. I would sit there and pray to something I can't make for myself out of myself alone to please put down the sticks to poke me with. Please kick your infinitesimal sands somewhere else. I know his roosters crowing in some far away dream. Everything but the sun and all of the hungry faces that flew too close to the nothing clean of too light. The sense of self that fades away in presence of lives continuing without you. The unfairness of it. But I don't want to kill it to stick it under a glass, you know? To run away from a pattern of self to sit back and preserve in jelly these grand ideas about them and us. The poor Saharans, the hunger. The savagery of stomping the wings into the dirt heat denied in pressing the person next to you into absolving you. Big questions in the sky, is any of it fair? I know and could talk myself into the writerly decisions. It's just Port and Kit, true to them and their man made walls. It makes sense that Kit philosophical backseats her destiny with them between her legs because Bowles told me all along that she did this. He led me to where there was no door to Port's being. But I don't want to talk myself into believing it. Bowles has done more than this. I freaking loved The Spider's House. He could have made them the carcass buzzing with flies more than the vampiric let me in voice. I think these days I would do anything to avoid that. I know that when Port has to ravel in his reveling solitudes. I can hear the silence and there are voices that speak to me. I don't want to give the answers. Melody and then the lyrics like in 101 Dalmatians. I don't know, I know Paul Bowles can be the desert more than the buzzing of the already dead. I don't know. I feel I need to look at something bigger than let Port and Kit shut up.

Someone once had said to her that the sky hides the night behind it, shelters the person beneath from the horror that lies above. ...more

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Nov 26, 2015 Ken rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: finished-in-2015

When you remember reading a book long ago and you remember liking it, trust your instincts. Read it again. I did and, in the case of The Sheltering Sky, didn't regret a thing. I loved the exotic, North African setting. And the always slightly off-balancing love triangle of Port, Kit, and Tunner (what weirdly wonderful names).

Some stop-me sentences, too. I love stop-me sentences. I never run them. Not even a roll-through. In fact, if no one's behind me, I often back up and fail to run them again ...more

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Jul 13, 2007 David rated it it was amazing · 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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Dec 15, 2013 Mary rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, 2014

“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 ...more

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Aug 23, 2008 Jennifer (aka EM) rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Recommends it for: Diehard romantics and existential atheists

Shelves: for-the-desert-island, 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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Dec 18, 2006 Courtney rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction

Bowles, an expatriate, writes a compelling story of travellers lost in the vast, impassive desert. He touches on how American inability to understand/comprehend other cultures ultimately destroys them.

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Jan 09, 2007 Kim rated it liked it · review of another edition

Oh about a 3.5. It took me a bit to get into this book, or else I would rate it higher. Once I got into it (about halfway through), I couldn't put it down. It was psychologically draining. ...more

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Mar 10, 2007 Ryan rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Do you know what Bowles is really good at? Charting the psychologies of people as they go crazy.

Do you like travelling to exotic locales? Read this book. Maybe you won't so much afterwards... ...more

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Mar 22, 2007 Emily rated it did not like it · review of another edition

Someone please tell me why this book came recommended to me. So boring, so pointless, so annoying.

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Mar 30, 2007 M.A.G. rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Recommends it for: E'ryone

My favorite fucking book of all time. It made me realize that I was the supporting character, not the lead.

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Play Book Tag: [poll] the sheltering sky \| Paul Bowles	1	8	Feb 26, 2020 05:12PM
Port Moresby's just desert	5	32	Mar 08, 2016 12:03PM
my take	2	24	Feb 01, 2016 06:31AM
Why couldn't I put this book down?	12	70	Dec 01, 2015 07:31AM
Why Bowles is such a master of suspense	11	34	Jun 27, 2014 02:16PM

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About Paul Bowles

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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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“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.” — 118 likes

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