Paul Bowles, The Sheltering Sky

Raj Chandarlapaty (Independent Scholar - North America)

The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 8.1.2: North African Writing and Culture: Francophone, Arabic, Spanish.
Vol. editors: Kate Averis (Universidad de Antioquia), Lia Brozgal (University of California, Los Angeles), Helen Rachel Cousins (Newman University), Ziad Elmarsafy (King's College London), Claire Gallien (Université Paul Valéry Montpellier 3), Siobhán McIlvanney (King's College London), Dalia Mostafa (University of Manchester), Nora Parr (SOAS, University of London), Rita Sakr (Maynooth University)

Dates

First circulation or publication 1949

Places

United States (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Novel

Resources

Paul Bowles’s longtime friend, playwright Tennessee Williams, had this to say about Bowles’s first novel:

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. (11)

The true significance of The Sheltering Sky, written about Bowles’s travels in 1931 and then in 1947-8 in North Africa, has been the …

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2301 words

Citation: Chandarlapaty, Raj. "The Sheltering Sky". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 16 May 2011 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=33189, accessed 23 November 2024.]

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