Travels

Description

Paul Bowles began travelling the moment he could - leaving America as a teenager to visit Gertrude Stein in Paris. He settled in Morocco after the war, and for thirty years travelled in North Africa, Central America, Southeast Asia, Indian and Sri Lanka (where he bought an island). He wrote articles, essays and journals along the way - writing which ranks with his novels in its astute observation, dry wit and impeccable prose. Travels brings together for the first time Paul Bowles's travel writing and journals. It includes the full text of his books Their Heads Are Green and Days: A Tangier Journal, along with more than twenty other pieces, previously unpublished in book form. They are accompanied by forty photos from the Bowles archive.

Paul Bowles (1910-99) was the author of four novels, most famously The Sheltering Sky, a NY Times bestseller that was later filmed by Bertolucci. He was also a composer of note, writing music for Tennessee Williams' plays on Broadway. In 1938 Paul married the writer Jane Bowles; although both largely homosexual, they were devoted companions, living in flats above one another in Tangier, Paul's home from 1947. In Morocco, Paul Bowles created a remarkable series of books translated from local storytellers, notably Mohammed Mrabet.

'As a traveller, as a writer, I have learned from Bowles' habit of observation, his love of extreme situations, his curiosity about cultures, his love of solitude, and most of all his patience.' Paul Theroux