Paul Bowles had already established himself as an important composer when at age 39 he published The Sheltering Sky and became recognized as one of the most powerful writers of the postwar period. From his base in Tangier he produced globally ranging nove
In 1971, Jorge Luis Borges was invited to preside over a series of seminars on his writing at Columbia University. This book is a record of those seminars, which took the form of informal discussions between Borges, Norman Thomas di Giovanni--his editor a
The years since World War II have seen an exciting resurgence of the short story. From Albert Camus to William Maxwell, from Amos Oz to R.K. Narayan, from Ann Beattie to Yukio Mishima - this incomparably rich and diverse collection attests to the vigor an
Following the immense success of The Art of the Tale, Daniel Halpern has assembled the next generation of short-story writers—those born after 1937—to create a companion volume, The Art of the Story. Attesting to the depth, range, and continued popula
A new telling of Dante's Inferno, this translation is the most fluent, grippingly readable version of the famous poem yet, and—with all the consummate technical skill that is the hallmark of Sean O'Brien's own poetry—manages the near-impossible task o
On the terrace of an elaborate hilltop apartment overlooking a Central American capital, four people sit making polite conversation. The American couple—an elderly physician and his young wife—are tourists. Their host, whom they have just met, is a yo
A Distant Episode contains the best of Paul Bowles's short stories, as selected by the author. An American cult figure, Bowles has fascinated such disparate talents as Norman Mailer, Allen Ginsberg, Truman Capote, William S. Burroughs, Gore Vidal, and Jay
Stories and journal notes by an extraordinary young woman--adventurer and traveler, Arabic scholar, Sufi mystic and adept of the Djillala cult."Not long before her death Isabelle Eberhardt wrote: "No one ever lived more from day to day or was more depende
The short fiction of American literary cult figure Paul Bowles is marked by a unique, delicately spare style, and a dark, rich, exotic mood, by turns chilling, ironic, and wry—possessing a symmetry between beauty and terror that is haunting and ultimate
