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The Sheltering Sky (P.S.)
 

The Sheltering Sky (P.S.)

by Paul Bowles

American novelist and short-story writer, poet, translator, classical music composer, and filmscorer Paul Bowles has lived as an expatriate for more than 40 years in the North African nation of Morocco, a country that reaches into the vast and inhospitable Sahara Desert. The desert is itself a character in The Sheltering Sky, the most famous of Bowles' books, which is about three young... (read more)

Top tags: fiction,  africa,  travel,  paul bowles,  20th century (all tags)

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Other Reviews

Amazon Reviews (5)
 

Most Helpful Reviews

Liked It

2 of 2 members found this review helpful.
elcadejo
  • Rated 4 stars

“This novel is a feast of rich, thought-laden prose, but the problem I have with it is that the Moresbys are just so un-likeable. You quickly find yourself willing them on over the edge - and out of view - as quickly as possible.

Bowles was possibly aware of this defect as he appears to compensate for it by shadowing his jaded American couple with the Lyles, an exaggeratedly loathsome Anglo-Australian mother and son duo, that Port himself acknowledges are little more than living...”

elcadejo’s full review »
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Didn’t Like It

1 of 1 members found this review helpful.
postcards
  • Rated 1 stars

“I really thought I would like this book, but I found it so lacking.. I had no sense of the places (and isn't that one of the most important parts of the book!?) or the amount of time they spent doing anything.

Also, I couldn't have cared less about the characters.
I briefly appreciated the mysterious, veiled style of the writing, until it prevented me from understanding anything else that was happening.

If reading this book was meant to be an isolating, despairing, but...”

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Community:
  • Rated 3.95 stars
Amazon:
  • Rated 4 stars
  

Newest Comments

  • hajar z

    hajar z said:

    “paul bowles discusses a culture not only writing a story. he lived most of the events he mentioned in the book”

    posted Sunday, June 15 2008
  • Marcus

    marcus said:

    “The movie by Bertolluci is beautiful, but I thought the woman's crisis a bit unlikely. I have written a review of another book: Migration to the North in which the women are equally under the sway of a charismatic black man, with an equally unlikely outcome. That's over at Scribd:
    http://www.scribd.com/doc/3011800/Tayeb-Salih-Migration-to-the-North”

    posted Monday, June 9 2008
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