The Sheltering Sky (fiction)

Paul Bowles (1949)
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THE A5 BOOK REVIEW

The Sheltering Sky by Paul Bowles is a 1949 novel about three travelers adrift in North Africa after World War II.  Faced with a disintegrating marriage, an American couple travel aimlessly with a friend from desert town to town, continually unsatisfied and continually seeking something new as they move farther and farther away from familiarity and comfort.  A love triangle of sorts develops among the three, further complicating and straining their relationships, and the dangers of the desert slowly overwhelm the group.  The building tension is almost unbearable, leading to a startling climax and unpredictable but credible end.  While The Sheltering Sky uses the Sahara as a backdrop, it is not really a travel book on North Africa; it is much more of a poetic and sharp reflection on human reason and the stark frailty of life.  Bowles’ evocative novel of existential despair is known as a landmark of 20th century literature, with Time magazine including the book in its 100 Best English-language novels from 1923 to 2005. 
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ABOUT PAUL BOWLES

Paul Bowles (1910-1999) was an American writer who was raised in a cultured middle-class family in New York City, attended the University of Virginia, and traveled frequently before settling to live as an expatriate in Tangier with his wife Jane Bowles in the late 1940s.  He is considered to be one of the writers that helped shaped literature for his generation, highly praised for the purity of his writing and the elegance of his prose.  Travels: Collected Writings 1950-1993 is a collection of short articles sharing his travels and rich life experience.     

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GREAT QUOTES FROM THE SHELTERING SKY

"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."

"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 fragile we are under the sheltering sky.  Behind the sheltering sky is a vast dark universe, and we're just so small."

INTERESTING FACTS & LINKS:

  • Read the New York Times review, "An Allegory of Man and His Sahara", written in 1949 by Tennessee Williams.
  • The Sheltering Sky was made into a feature film in 1990, directed by Bernardo Bertolucci and starring John Malkovich and Debra Winger.  Bowles narrated the film and makes a cameo appearance.

THE TRAILER FOR THE MOVIE