Try our Advanced SearchShort stories by Paul Bowles
Paul Frederic Bowles (/boʊlz/; December 30, 1910 – November 18, 1999) was an American expatriate composer, author, and translator. He became associated with Tangier, where he settled in 1947 and lived for 52 years to the end of his life. Following a cultured middle-class upbringing in New York City, during which he displayed a talent for music and writing, Bowles pursued his education at the University of Virginia before making several trips to Paris in the 1930s. He studied music with Aaron Copland, and in New York wrote music for theatrical productions, as well as other compositions. He achieved critical and popular success with his first novel The Sheltering Sky (1949), set in French North Africa, which he had visited in 1931. In 1947, Bowles settled in Tangier, at that time in the Tangier International Zone, and his wife Jane Bowles followed in 1948. Except for winters spent in Ceylon during the early 1950s, Tangier was Bowles's home for the remainder of his life. He came to symbolize American immigrants in the city. Bowles died in 1999 at the age of 88. His ashes are buried near family graves in Lakemont Cemetery, in upstate New York.
Listing 6 stories.
When a man visits an old village called Ain Tadouirt to visit an old friend and conduct research, he becomes captured by a tribe and forced to entertain. He must figure out how to escape a life of enslavement in a foreign land.
While enjoying his time in Sri Lanka, a man invites his parents for a visit, and what should be a perfect vacation suddenly devolves into a chance encounter with a murder scene.
A missionary preaches to a village in Mexico but faces utter alienation.
In the city of Tangier, Morocco, a local man delves into the murder mystery of a Canadian named Duncan Marsh. Upon meeting with Marsh's watchman, he discovers details about Marsh's mysterious relationship with his cook and about the night of the murder.
A six-year-old boy visiting his extended family for Christmas on the East coast must survive the constant abuse from his toxically masculine father which sends him further and further into the recesses of his imagination.
A man from the mountains travels to a desert town once a year to sell his wares. One summer, he has an encounter with white foreigners that leaves him filled with regret and shame.