Travels: Collected Writings 1950-1993
Paul Bowles (2010)

THE A5 BOOK REVIEW

Travels: Collected Writings 1950-1993 is an anthology of travel writing from one of the most important American novelists of the twentieth century, Paul Bowles.  The book includes short articles and essays covering over forty years of his life including his time spent in Paris, Thailand, Kenya, and of course Morocco, one of the regions for where he is best known.  His writing is infused with deep awareness on his life experience, and on the places that have inspired and influenced him. Those who loved the momentous novel The Sheltering Sky will enjoy getting to know him better; he incorporates many stories and photographs of his friends and his wife and fellow writer Jane Bowles.
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ABOUT PAUL BOWLES

Paul Bowles (1910-1999) was an American writer and composer, best known for his first novel The Sheltering Sky, published in 1949.  He was raised in a cultured middle-class family in New York City, attended the University of Virginia, and travelled frequently before settling to live as an expatriate in Tangier, Morocco, 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.  The Sheltering Sky is a story of disillusionment post-World War II, following three travellers adrift in North Africa. 

GREAT QUOTES:

"Bowles' long and full life is captured in these pieces, which also shed light on his brilliant fictions,  It was a life of his choice.  He never compromised, and thoroughly admirable in going his own way, writing what he wished, he never did anything he did not want to do; he kept at it until he died."
- Paul Theroux commenting on Paul Bowles in the introduction to Travels: Collected Writings 1950-1993

INTERESTING LINKS:

  • Read the 2011 LA Times review of Travels: Collected Writings 1950-1993.
  • Paul Bowles died at age 88.  Read the obituary from the Guardian.