The Sheltering Sky - Paul Bowles

Strange Romance in the Exotic Desert

SIGNET BOOKS 840

FIRST PRINTING JANUARY 1951

NEW YORK, USA

FIRST PUBLISHED BY NEW DIRECTIONS 1949

COVER ART BY HOOKS

Harem Bride

"The three wives of Belqassim strode into the room...They threw themselves upon Kit's prostrate form, wrenching the turban from her head and ripping her garments open by sheer force, so that all at once the upper part of her body was entirely unclothed...Then she felt the whip strike across her breasts. As she screamed, she reached out and grasped a head that bobbed in front of her...With all her might she pulled it downward and tried to rip the thing to shreds, but it would not tear; it merely became wet. The whip was making streaks of fire across her shoulders and back."

"The Sheltering Sky, it seems to me, is the finest lost-generation novel since the banks closed and the lost boys and girls began coming home from Montparnasse cafes to find themselves on the farms or in papa's factory."

-Lewis Gannett, New York Herald Tribune

PAUL BOWLES had achieved a distinguished reputation as a composer and a music critic before he turned to literature, in his early thirties. His first novel, The Sheltering Sky, published by New Directions, has been widely acclaimed by reviewers. Born in New York, he now lives in Tangiers.