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The Sheltering Sky

by Paul Bowles

3.92 · Rating Details · 19,739 Ratings · 1,368 Reviews

A story about three American travelers adrift in the cities and deserts of North Africa after World War II, The Sheltering Sky explores the limits of humanity when it touches the unfathomable emptiness and impassive cruelty of the desert.

This P.S. edition features an extra 16 pages of insights into the book, including author interviews, recommended reading, and more.

Paperback, Penguin Red Classics, 342 pages

Published June 1st 2007 by Penguin Books (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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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 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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Sep 05, 2015 Vessey rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: romance, 4-stars, deep-and-challenging

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’t ...more

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

Shelves: favourites, fiction, american

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

Shelves: amados-libros

The One Book I Can Truly Say 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 was absolutely 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 ...more

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

Shelves: fiction, 2017

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 Sah ...more

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

Shelves: modern-canon, 2010-read

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

Later, many days later, I came to with a throbbing headache and a sour taste in my mouth. The crystal turned out to be crystal meth and it had severely eroded my judgement. What I had taken to be beautiful and enticing was just a jaded street hustler peddling the same old weary goods that had been around the 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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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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Jun 14, 2007 Jessica rated it did not like 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 S. 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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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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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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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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Dec 15, 2013 Mary rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, 2014, morocco

“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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May 31, 2011 Brian rated it really liked it

I read this early in my 20s - more than a decade before traveling beyond US soil and 15 years before witnessing the siren call of an African desert. Bowles' fiction is hypnotic, and his strongly written characters seem to have relevance to a reader at any stage in life. But I want to put that theory to the test, so I'm reminding myself now: re-read this book.

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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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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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Jan 23, 2015 Clif Hostetler rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: novel

This 1949 novel is considered by the literati as classic literature that reflects "post-colonial alienation and existential despair." (Quote is from Wikipedia.)

Apparently I don't like "existential despair" because I didn't enjoy reading this book. I will grant that the writing is good. It occurred to me while listening to the audio edition that many portions of the narrative could be presented as free verse at a modern day poetry slam and it could be passed off as good poetry.

But the story its This 1949 novel is considered by the literati as classic literature that reflects "post-colonial alienation and existential despair." (Quote is from Wikipedia.)

Apparently I don't like "existential despair" because I didn't enjoy reading this book. I will grant that the writing is good. It occurred to me while listening to the audio edition that many portions of the narrative could be presented as free verse at a modern day poetry slam and it could be passed off as good poetry.

But the story itself is about some Americans travelers--they don't think of themselves as tourists--wandering across the Sahara Desert. I found these characters not only unlikeable but also prone to repeatedly and inexplicably make unwise travel decisions. The adventure of the three main characters begins in Morocco and then moves into French Algeria. (view spoiler)

Many readers at the time this book was published apparently considered the deserts of French colonial North Africa to be a romantic setting for such a story. Subsequent history of that area in particular and the Moslem world in general has erased any romantic associations in my mind.

Why is it that exquisite writing elaborating a depressed outlook on life by bored characters is considered literature that provides an insight into post-war 20th Century life? I must not be depressed enough to appreciate this literature.

The following are some excerpts from a review written by Tennessee Williams and published in the New York Times in December 1949.

... "The Sheltering Sky" alone of the books that I have recently read by American authors appears to bear the spiritual imprint of recent history in the western world. Here the imprint is not visible upon the surface of the novel. It exists far more significantly in a certain philosophical aura that envelopes it.

There is a curiously double level to this novel. The surface is enthralling as narrative. It is impressive as writing. But above that surface is the aura that I spoke of, intangible and powerful, bringing to mind one of those clouds that you have seen in summer, close to the horizon and dark in color and now and then silently pulsing with interior flashes of fire. And that is the surface of the novel that has filled me with such excitement.
.....
In this external aspect the novel is, therefore, an account of startling adventure. In its interior aspect, "The Sheltering Sky" is an allegory of the spiritual adventure of the fully conscious person into modern experience. This is not an enticing way to describe it. It is a way that might suggest the very opposite kind of a novel from the one that Paul Bowles has written. Actually this superior motive does not intrude in explicit form upon the story, certainly not in any form that will need to distract you from the great pleasure of being told a first-rate story of adventure by a really first-rate writer.

I suspect that a good many people will read this book and be enthralled by it without once suspecting that it contains a mirror of what is most terrifying and cryptic within the Sahara of moral nihilism, into which the race of man now seems to be wandering blindly.

For myself I can say that I was not enthralled by the story. And since reading Tennessee Williams' explanation of its deeper meaning, I guess I can also say that the "mirror of what is most terrifying and cryptic within the Sahara of moral nihilism" is not to my liking either.
...more

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Jan 12, 2010 Chrissie rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, philo-psychol, text-checked, morocco, audible, 2013-read, returned

What exactly is the author trying to say with this book? Is he selling us existentialism through this novel? Perhaps. What is he saying about the central couple’s relationship, both with each and with their friends? This too is unclear. The two main protagonists are trying to reach out to each other, but do they succeed? This circles back to the author’s philosophical message. Perhaps it is enough that the book draws our attention to these questions. The answers are not clear.

What does the autho What exactly is the author trying to say with this book? Is he selling us existentialism through this novel? Perhaps. What is he saying about the central couple’s relationship, both with each and with their friends? This too is unclear. The two main protagonists are trying to reach out to each other, but do they succeed? This circles back to the author’s philosophical message. Perhaps it is enough that the book draws our attention to these questions. The answers are not clear.

What does the author want to say with the title? This too is unclear, but worth discussion.

The first half of the book is very different from the second half. I do not feel the two hold together. The first half focuses on philosophy. The first half has many parallels with Camus’ “The Stranger”. Both are set in Africa, one in Morocco and the other in Algeria. There is a streetcar in both. In neither is it the individuals that control their lives, but rather the other way around. Life just happens and you must submit. The second half has a completely different style of writing. You switch from philosophical analysis to a plot oriented, adventure story reminiscent of “One Thousand and One Nights”. Depending on your preferences you will like one or the other…..but not both.

The audiobook narration by Jennifer Connelly is very well done. She distinguishes between English and American characters. They do make you smile…. Maybe this is because I now live in Europe? French, English and Arabic languages are used; this is done adroitly. The languages are not translated. Although I don’t see this as a problem, I was happy that I easily understood the French. The slang chosen felt genuine; that is exactly how people would express themselves.

A central theme of the book is the difference between travelers and tourists. In fact this is why I chose the book, having myself lived in different countries. The main protagonists see themselves as travelers, but I felt they acted often as tourists. Rather than being curious about a new environment and culture they were d-i-s-g-u-s-t-e-d and apathetic. They couldn’t possibly have thought that the difficulties that arose and the filth they saw were anything but to be expected! They seemed to be looking for a clean problem free journey. This seems terribly illogical. Part of this IS explained by the difference between the man and the women, and it is interesting to consider which one of them really was the “traveler”.

There are loose ends in this novel, characters thrown in that one cannot fully understand. What happens to them is left completely unresolved. Nope this was not well done.

There is quite a bit that can be discussed in this book, but I can only give it two stars. It was not terrible, but just OK.
...more

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Feb 05, 2011 Szplug rated it it was ok · review of another edition

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

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May 17, 2008 Amy rated it really liked it · review of another edition

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

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

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Oct 29, 2008 Will Byrnes rated it liked it

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Jul 23, 2011 AC rated it it was amazing

Shelves: novels-english

Having seen the movie, which of course was uneven, I hesitated about reading this book - but needed something I could beat up at the beach. Then there were quite a few quite negative reviews it's gotten from GR friends (that I respect).

Well..., invho, this book is nearly flawless and is a work of near genius. The overall conception, the structure and composition, the depth of language, intelligence... AND the depth of feeling.... Character and plot..., nearly flawless. I would have asked him to ...more

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

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

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.

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Jul 18, 2008 Sara added it

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May 14, 2011 Magdelanye rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: favorite, spiritual-adventure, max

The first time I read this book I was in my 20's, and though it made a deep impression on me, and I loved it passionately, that was so long ago that I was amazed and somewhat dismayed to find that I remembered nothing of the detail. Only towards the end, when I was not surprised by the bizarre events that unfolded, did I have any sense even of deju vu. It was as if I was reading it for the first time.
Once again I was swept up in the lyrical writing and scope of the story.
Bowles is a brilliant s ...more

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Sep 10, 2015 Mel rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: some-of-my-best-reads, rugged-individuals, read-in-2016

I didn't expect to enjoy this book as much as I did. It was mentioned in Patti Smith's M Train that I had just read as one of her many literary obsessions. I can see why she enjoyed it. The language, which is at times realistic and other times dreamy, is similar to some of the language she uses in her story telling.

Bowles really takes you on a journey through North Africa, and the language he uses to do it is really wonderful. I also felt some of the subject matter and character's reactions are ...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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“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.” — 108 likes

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