New Releases by Paul Bowles

The Answer Is Still No is an important, urgent book that compiles interviews with people who live along the route of the proposed Enbridge pipeline in Northern British Columbia. The oil pipeline and supertankers – linking the tar sands of Alberta to the demand of the growing Asian market – are a key component of Canada’s strategy of natural resource extraction. But for the people living along the proposed pipeline route, Enbridge poses a massive environmental risk, which threatens their way of life. This edited collection takes the passionate words and voices of twelve citizens and activists and results in one powerful position when it comes to blind economic development at the expense of our environment and communities: The answer is still “no.”

Ambientada en Fez, Marruecos, durante el levantamiento nacionalista de 1954, La casa de la araña es quizás la novela más bella y sutil de Paul Bowles. También es, sin duda, la más política y visionaria. Escrita en 1955, detecta con maestría las irresolubles tensiones del mundo árabe, las mismas que estallarán varias décadas más tarde. La trama reúne a tres personajes disímiles: John Stenham, un escritor norteamericano devoto de la antigua cultura del lugar y que detesta al imperialismo francés que por entonces dominaba Marruecos; Polly Veyron, turista norteamericana de buena conciencia que defiende el desarrollo de los países oprimidos, y Amar, un muchacho marroquí analfabeto que se gana la vida en la calle, un musulmán ortodoxo que desprecia por igual el progresismo impío de los revolucionarios y la ocupación colonial. En una ciudad asediada por la violencia, cuya intensidad se palpita en magnificas descripciones, a través de ese trío que persigue ideales inconciliables, todos en buena medida imposibles de alcanzar, Paul Bowles articula los temas centrales de su literatura, la soledad, las vivencias de los expatriados y la incomprensión entre personas de distintas culturas, con la potencia de un thriller político. La casa de la araña, por su ambición narrativa y por un resultado que está a la altura de esa ambición, por su continua perspicacia psicológica, esta considerada una obra maestra.

Περιγραφή βιβλίου Ύστερα από δέκα χρόνια γάμου, ο Πορτ και η Κιτ Μόρσμπερι, ένα σοφιστικέ ζευγάρι Αμερικανών, διαπιστώνουν πως, καθώς έχουν απομακρυνθεί ψυχικά και έχουν αποξενωθεί σεξουαλικά, δυσκολεύονται όλο και περισσότερο να συνεχίσουν να συμβιώνουν. Προσπαθώντας να βγουν από αυτό το αδιέξοδο, ταξιδεύουν στη Βόρεια Αφρική με σκοπό να διασχίσουν την Αλγερία – δεν έχουν καταλήξει στον ακριβή προορισμό τους, αλλά είναι αποφασισμένοι να αφήσουν πίσω τους τον σύγχρονο κόσμο. Αυτή η ανέμελή τους απόφαση όμως θα έχει τρομερές συνέπειες και για τους δύο. ΕΓΡΑΨΑΝ ΓΙΑ ΤΟ ΒΙΒΛΙΟ Ένα από τα πιο πρωτότυπα, θα έλεγε κανείς ενορατικά, λογοτεχνικά έργα του 20ού αιώνα. Tobias Wolff, συγγραφέας Ένα έργο που στέκεται επάξια στην πρώτη γραμμή της αγγλόφωνης μεταπολεμικής λογοτεχνίας. New Republic Ευφυές… Ένα βιβλίο δυνατό και διεισδυτικό, με εντάσεις που συγκλονίζουν. Evening Standard Μεταφέρθηκε στον κινηματογράφο από τον Μπερνάρντο Μπερτολούτσι, με πρωταγωνιστές την Ντέμπρα Γουίνκερ και τον Τζον Μάλκοβιτς. Ήταν ένα απόγευμα του Ιουλίου του 1947. Είχα μόλις ξυπνήσει από μια σιέστα που μου επέβαλλε η ζέστη, γιατί η Φεζ μπορεί να έχει πολύ υψηλές θερμοκρασίες το καλοκαίρι. Θυμάμαι την αποπνικτική ατμόσφαιρα στο κλειστοφοβικό δωμάτιο. «Θα ανοίξω το παράθυρο» σκέφτηκα «και από κάτω θα είναι το λιμάνι του Ουαχράν, και ο αέρας θα είναι φρέσκος και δροσερός». Ήμουν ήδη μέσα στο βιβλίο που ήθελα να γράψω. Paul Bowles Από τον πρόλογό του στο βιβλίο

First published in 1962, A Hundred Camels in the Courtyard by American author Paul Bowles is a book comprising four tales of contemporary life in a land where cannabis, rather than alcohol, customarily provides a way out of the phenomenological world. Thus, of the men in these stories, Salam uses suggestions supplied by smoking kif to rid himself of a possible enemy. He of the Assembly catches himself up in the mesh of his own kif-dream and begins to act it out in reality. Idir’s victory over Lahcen is the classical story of the kif-smoker’s ability to outwit the drinker. Driss the soldier, with aid of kit, proves the existence of magic to his enlightened superior officer. For all of them the kif-pipe is the means to attaining a state of communication not only with others, but above all with themselves. “His work is art. At his best Paul Bowles has no peer.”—Time

Il pastore Dowe pensava che quella nella foresta amazzonica sarebbe stata una missione semplice: ha già portato la parola di dio in molti luoghi remoti, gli indios di Tacatè sono miti per natura e lui ha diligentemente imparato il loro dialetto. Quando si trova a predicare purtroppo gli abitanti sono distratti e se ne vanno appena finisce di parlare. Come fare a ottenere la loro attenzione? Glielo svela il saggio Nicolás, portavoce del villaggio: con la musica. Verrà meno ai suoi ideali, il pastore Dowe, o sfodererà il suo vecchio grammofono pur di toccare le anime dei nuovi fedeli? Tratto da: “La delicata preda”, pubblicato da Feltrinelli. Numero di caratteri: 52.432

Les voyages seraient-ils une tentative de comprendre le monde en même temps qu''une quête de soi ? Pour Paul Bowles, qui épuisa la planète dans les années cinquante avant de s''installer définitivement à Tanger, il s''agissait, aussi, d''aller à la rencontre de la diversité des hommes et des cultures avant que l''Occident ne les ronge. De Ceylan à Tanger, en Turquie, dans les souks de la Corne d''or, au coeur de l''absolu saharien, Paul Bowles a rédigé ce carnet de voyages comme un itinéraire géographique et littéraire, un ensemble de relevés fragmentaires baignés de lumière et de musique. On ne saurait trouver plus bel "état des lieux" de notre terre.

In the nineteenth century there flourished a peculiar breed of Englishmen—often the second sons of the aristocracy, or ambitious men from a lower class—who as soldiers, consuls and tea planters, were largely responsible for making England a great colonial power. Save for the fact that he is a staunch anticolonialist, Paul Bowles resembles these men in many respects. Like them, he appears to be happiest away from civilization as we know it; like them, he thrives when the traveling is hardest, the food ghastly or infrequent, water scarce, heat intolerable, or mosquitoes abundant. This engaging collection of eight travel essays by the author of such noted fiction as The Sheltering Sky and The Delicate Prey deals largely with places in the world that few Westerners have ever heard of, much less seen—places as yet unencumbered by the trappings, luxuries, and corruptions of modern civilization. Except for one essay on Central America, all of these pieces are concerned with remote spots in the Hindu, Buddhist, or Mohammedan worlds. The author is a sympathetic and discerning interpreter of these alien cultures, and his eyes and ears are especially alert both to what is bizarre and what is wise in the civilizations in which he settles. He is also acutely aware of the transitions occurring on the fringes of many of these regions, and he is disturbed and indignant about the corrosive effect of Western culture on the non-Christian way of life. Above all, however, Paul Bowles is a superb and observant traveler—born wanderer who finds pleasure in the inaccessible and who cheerfully endures the concomitant hardships matter-of-factly and with humor. These essays provide us with Paul Bowles’s characteristic insightfulness and bring us closer to a world we frequently hear about, but often find difficult to understand.

Paul Bowles’s classic collection of short stories, available in a deluxe paperback edition—part of Ecco’s Art of the Story series. “All the tales are a variety of detective story,” wrote Bowles of this, his first short story collection, “in which the reader is the detective; the mystery is in the motivation for the characters’’ behavior.” In such stories as “A Distant Episode” and How Many Midnights,” Bowles pushes human character beyond socially defined limits and maps a transformed (often horribly transformed) reality. Bowles captures the duality of human frailty and cruelty in these seventeen taut and atmospheric tales, written between 1939 and 1949. Brutal and gorgeous, visceral yet perceptive, this timeless collection is “one of the most profound, beautifully wrought, and haunting collections in our literature. . . at once austere, witty, violent, and sensuous. . . . His language has a purity of line, a poise and authority entirely its own, capable of instantly modulating from farce to horror without a ruffle” (Tobias Wolff).

This extraordinary collection of correspondence by Paul Bowles spans eight decades and provides an evolving portrait of an artist renowned for his privacy. From his earliest extant letter, written at the age of four, to his precocious effusions to Aaron Copeland and to Gertrude Stein; from his meditations on mescaline as relayed to Ned Rorem, to his intensely moving letters to Jane Bowles during her illness, In Touch fills in the lacunae left by previous biographers and offers a rare look at the many aspects of Bowles''s brilliant career—as composer, novelist, short-story master, travel writer, translator, ethnographer, and literary critic. Here is Bowles on the genesis of his first novel, The Sheltering Sky; on his distaste for Western melodies and his dogged attempts to record indigenous Moroccan music; on the Beats, Gore Vidal, Truman Capote, and Tennessee Williams; on the nature and craft of writing; on Bernardo Bertolucci, David Byrne, and Sting; on the decline of American and the challenges of living in North Africa. Gossipy, reflective, enlightening, and always entertaining, In Touch stands as an epistolary autobiography of one of the legendary writers of our time, and a unique chronicle of the twentieth-century avant-garde.

Capitalism stands unrivalled as the most enduring economic system of our times. Since the collapse of the Soviet bloc the world has become a new stage for capital, and yet despite this dominance capitalism is still not widely understood. It remains a subject of enduring interest that is discovered and rediscovered over time by each successive generation of students. Exploring the life of this world-shaping system and the writings of leading thinkers, this study also now takes into account recent developments, including the impact of the Global Financial Crisis and the complexities of China’s political economy. Paul Bowles addresses these key questions: - what are the central, unchanging features of capitalism? - how does capitalism vary from place to place and over time? - does capitalism improve our lives? - is capitalism a system which is ‘natural’ and ‘free’? Or is it unjust and unstable? - what about today’s global capitalism? - will capitalism destroy or liberate us? This updated edition of a classic text is now supported by a comprehensive documents section, chronology and who’s who, as well as a new colour plate section. It offers a concise, lucid and thought-provoking introduction for undergraduate students or anyone with an interest in this most pervasive, long lasting and adaptable yet crisis-ridden of economic systems.

International trade must be analysed within the historical context within which it occurs. Behind the statistics on trade flows lie power structures, class interests and international hierarchies. These change over time and how countries respond to them has critical implications for their citizen’s well-being. In this book, the history of trade in Australia, Canada and Mexico is analysed. Trade agreements are analysed in detail to explore the new forms that dependence and subordination have taken. Arguing that the free trade agreements are significantly biased in favour of the United States, the contributors analyse how each of the three countries are being subject to specific forms of re-peripheralisation and examine possible alternatives for a progressive future based on an integration in the global economy which enhances, rather than limits, democracy and social justice. By providing an historical and critical account of trade policy in the three countries, the book provides a welcome antidote to the ahistorical accounts of free trade supporters.

Nella fresca campagna di Cold Point non si incontrano case per chilometri e chilometri. Rifugiarvisi, portare tuo figlio lontano da scuola e distrazioni, sembra la soluzione migliore per ricercare quel rapporto perduto. Eppure, nelle placide acque del lago di Cold Point potrebbero emergere turbamenti a lungo sommersi. E potrebbe essere impossibile celarli ai pochi ma vigili occhi che scrutano l''estraneo.Tratto da “La delicata preda”, pubblicato da Feltrinelli. Numero di caratteri: 53352.

Un grande romanzo, impregnato d’Africa, dall’indimenticato autore di Il té nel deserto. Il dilemma irrisolvibile dell’essere uno straniero immerso in una società molto diversa dalla propria e la difficoltà di comprendersi fra culture diverse, temi ricorrenti della scrittura di Paul Bowles, vengono messi in scena con una brutale franchezza in questo romanzo ambientato a Fez, in Marocco, durante i sommovimenti nazionalisti che nel 1954 dilaniarono il paese. Tuttora attualissimo, anche alla luce della scottante situazione del Medio Oriente contemporaneo, animato dall’interno da un’ambientazione evocata con grande efficacia e da un carnet di personaggi indimenticabili, La casa del ragno è forse il libro più riuscito, sottile e penetrante di Paul Bowles.

Originally published in 1955, Paul Bowles’s remarkable novel set in Fez, Morocco, during the last days of the French colonial empire, is an expansive piece of writing—vintage Bowles "With its atmosphere of sinister tension, its scenes of nationalist conspiracy and French police action, of escape and pursuit in the Arab quarter, The Spider''s House reads for stretches like a first-class political thriller." -New York Times The dilemma of the outsider in an alien society, and the gap in understanding between cultures, recurrent themes of Paul Bowles’s writings, are dramatized with brutal honesty in this novel set in Fez, Morocco, during that country’s 1954 nationalist uprising. Totally relevant to today’s political situation in the Middle East and elsewhere, richly descriptive of its setting, and uncompromising in its characterizations, The Spider’s House is perhaps Bowles’s best, most beautifully subtle novel.

Paul Bowles’s classic collection of short stories, now available in a a deluxe paperback edition—part of Ecco’s Art of the Story series “All the tales are a variety of detective story,” wrote Bowles of this, his first short story collection, “in which the reader is the detective; the mystery is in the motivation for the charcters’ behavior.” In such stories as “A Distant Episode” and How Many Midnights,” Bowles pushes human character beyond socially defined limits and maps a transformed (often horribly transformed) reality. Bowles captures the duality of human frailty and cruelty in these seventeen taut and atmospheric tales, written between 1939 and 1949. Brutal and gorgeous, visceral yet profound, this timeless collection is “one of the most profound, beautifully wrought, and haunting collections in our literature. . . at once austere, witty, violent, and sensuous. . . . His language has a purity of line, a poise and authority entirely its own, capable of instantly modulating from farce to horror without a ruffle” (Tobias Wolff).

“Bowles’s tales are at once austere, witty, violent, and sensuous. They move with the inevitability of myth. His language has a purity of line, a poise and authority entirley its own.” —Tobias Wolff An American cult figure, Paul Bowles has fascinated such disparate talents as Norman Mailer, Allen Ginsberg, Truman Capote, William S. Burroughs, Gore Vidal, and Tobias Wolff. From “The Delicate Prey” to “Too Far from Home,” this definitive collection celebrates the Bowles’s masterful artistry in short fiction.

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 book Their Heads Are Green along with thirty other pieces, previously unpublished in book form. They are accompanied by fifty photos from the Bowles archive.

In these hauntingly beautiful stories of abandonment and vengeance, extreme situations lead to disturbing conclusions. A missionary is sent to a place so distant he finds his God has no power there; a husband abandons his wife as they honeymoon in the South American jungle; a splash of water triggers an explosion of violence; and a boy''s drug-induced transformation leads to cruelty enjoyed and suffered. Masterfully written, these are chilling tales from sun-drenched and brutal climes.

Globalization and money – two concepts inextricably linked. In many ways the speed with which financial resources traverse the globe, the opportunities which this provides for the efficient allocation of resources, the possibilities which this creates for financial crises and traders who act as agents removed from the concerns of national citizens have come to symbolize the phenomenon, hopes and fears of ‘globalization’. However, inextricably linked they may be, but well understood they are not. In the case of national currencies, a wide variety of predictions and analyses can be found. For some, national currencies represent barriers to a seamless global economy. Others argue that national currencies will disappear due to the power of international financial markets which will force national governments to adopt more credible currencies and abandon their own. In contrast, others see imperialism or regionalism as the main challenges. Paul Bowles provides an innovative and systematic analysis of the implications of theories of globalization for national currencies. He critically examines whether, as a result, the world is heading for fewer currencies. He argues that the main ‘force of globalization’ which is endangering national currencies is that of globalization as ‘neoliberal globalism’. However there is no single neoliberal position on money and so the ‘contingent’ nature of neoliberalism explains why this particular force of globalization operates more strongly in some countries than others. This is demonstrated in case studies of four systemically significant currencies, namely, those of Australia, Canada, Mexico and Norway. National Currencies and Globalization will be of interest to researchers and students of International Political Economy, Politics, Economics and Finance.

In this intense and brilliant book Bowles focuses on Morocco, condensing expreience, emotion, and the whole history of a people into a series of short, insightful vignettes. He distills for us the very essence of Moroccan culture. With extraordinary immediacy, he takes the reader on a journey through the Moroccan centuries, pausing at points along the way to create resonant images of the country, it''s landscapes, and the beliefs and characteristics of its inhabitants.

Between 1987 and 1989, Paul Bowles, at the suggestion of a friend, kept a journal to record the daily events of his life. What emerges is not only just a record of the meals, conversations, and health concerns of the author of The Sheltering Sky but also a fascinating look at an artist at work in a new medium. Characterized by a refreshing informality, clear-sightedness, and passages of exquisite prose, these pages record with equal fascination the behavior of an itinerant spider, a brutal episode of violence in a Tangier marketplace, and the pageantry and excess of Malcolm Forbes''s seventieth birthday party. In Days, a master observer of the foreign and obscure turns his attentions toward his own daily existence, giving us a startlingly candid portrait of his life in late twentieth-century Tangier.

Paul Bowles è stato uno dei grandi scrittori di racconti americani e tuttavia per lo più non ha scritto storie americane. I suoi paesaggi sono quelli esotici – per un occidentale negli anni quaranta – di America Latina o Nord Africa. Questi racconti, tremendi e potenti, sono infatti ambientati in luoghi misteriosi, inquietanti, dove si vive una condizione di eterni “stranieri”, a sé e agli altri. Qui vigono culture differenti, lontane, fuori del cosiddetto mondo civile, qui si svela l’intrinseca difficoltà di comunicazione tra civiltà diverse. Il desiderio di avventura spesso si fa voluttà di perdersi, ma il confronto con l’altro da sé può essere rivelatore. Estraneità e distanza possono generare ansia, paura, vero e proprio orrore (come nel racconto Un episodio remoto dove un professore bianco, catturato da mercanti nomadi che gli tagliano la lingua, viene ridotto a una sorta di animale da circo). Sono storie visio-narie che sembrano sogni a occhi aperti, talora incubi (non a caso la dedica del libro è alla madre che per prima fece conoscere a Bowles i racconti di Poe), dove realtà e fantasia si mescolano e scambiano i ruoli (cosicché può pure accadere che una pazza si trasformi nella sorella sana, come in Tu non sei me).

"In this wonderfully engaging and informative collection we hear the voice of a different Paul Bowles. Writing on a wide range of subjects--jazz, film music, classical music, popular music, ethnic music--he is direct, opinionated, incisive, analytical, humorous, and passionate."—Millicent Dillon, author of You Are Not I: A Portrait of Paul Bowles

“The Library of America has made it easier for readers to enjoy Bowles’s exotic literary harvest.” — The Columbus Dispatch Paul Bowles was a composer, writer, and an American expatriate who spent most of the last five decades of his life in Tangier. According The Boston Globe, he was “one of the literary class acts of the twentieth century.” This Library of America volume, containing his stories and travel writings, is one of two volumes in the first annotated edition of Paul Bowles’s work and is a “treasure trove for readers who haven’t explored beyond The Sheltering Sky” (The Seattle Times). “All the tales are a variety of detective story,” wrote Bowles of his first collection, The Delicate Prey and Other Stories (1950), “in which the reader is the detective; the mystery is the motivation for the characters’ behavior.” In such stories as “A Distant Episode” and “How Many Midnights,” Bowles pushes human character beyond socially defined limits and maps a transformed (often horribly transformed) reality. A master of gothic terror and an acute and at times diabolically funny observer of manners and motives both American and Moroccan, Bowles confirmed his mastery of the short story in such volumes as A Hundred Camels in the Courtyard (1962), The Time of Friendship (1967), Things Gone and Things Still Here (1977), and Midnight Mass (1981), all included here along with a selection of his final stories. This volume also contains Up Above the World (1966), a frightening novella set in Latin America in which a trusting American couple are lured into an annihilating trap, and the informed and fascinating travel book Their Heads Are Green and Their Hands Are Blue (1963). LIBRARY OF AMERICA is an independent nonprofit cultural organization founded in 1979 to preserve our nation’s literary heritage by publishing, and keeping permanently in print, America’s best and most significant writing. The Library of America series includes more than 300 volumes to date, authoritative editions that average 1,000 pages in length, feature cloth covers, sewn bindings, and ribbon markers, and are printed on premium acid-free paper that will last for centuries.

Communication plays a central part in the increasing global interconnectedness of contemporary societies, nations and economies. In this book Cees J Hamelink examines the political processes and decisions which determine the global communication environment.Mass communication, telecommunication, data traffic, intellectual property and communication technology have all been regulated by agreements within the international community. Examining negotiation processes and their outcomes, the author offers an analysis of the global politics of communication and its implications for specific nations, areas and communities. Underlying the analysis is a fundamental concern with communication as an issue of human rights which raises the question: Do the standards agreed on world communication address the interests of ordinary people in their everyday lives?