The Sheltering Sky
by Paul Bowles · first published 1948
4mentions
3recommended by
4HN commenters
2012–2024first – last mentioned
75% recommend25% neutral
'The Sheltering Sky is a book about people on the edge of an alien space; somewhere where, curiously, they are never alone' Michael Hoffman. Port and Kit Moresbury, a sophisticated American couple, are finding it more than a little difficult to live with each other. Endeavouring to escape this predicament, they set off for North Africa intending to travel through Algeria - uncertain of exactly where they are heading, but determined to leave the modern world behind. The results of this casually taken decision are both tragic and compelling.
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…Dogs - Barker, Pat: Regeneration - Barker, Pat: The Eye in the Door - Barker, Pat: The Ghost Road - Bausch, Richard: In the Night Season - Blauner, Peter: The Intruder - Bowles, Paul: The Sheltering Sky - Boyle, T. Coraghessan: The Tortilla Curtain - Bryson, Bill: A Walk in the Woods - Buckley, Christopher: Thank You for Smoking - Carver, Raymond: Where I’m Calling From - Chabon, Michael: Werewolves…
on “Stephen King: Can a Novelist Be Too Productive? (2015)” ↗The sweet immaturity of the OP is amusing, but of course, he's in good company in expressing these sentiments. Many people have written about it but I think Paul Bowles nailed it in The Sheltering Sky: "Death is always on the way, but the fact that you don't know when it will arrive seems to take away from the finiteness of life. It's that terrible precision that we hate so much. But because we don't…
on “The Finite, Irreplaceable Hours of Your Life” ↗The Sheltering Sky by Paul Bowles. Existentialist novel—like Camus' The Stranger but better.
on “Ask HN: What's the best book you've read so far in 2024?” ↗…conceive of your life without it? Perhaps four or five times more. Perhaps not even that. How many more times will you watch the full moon rise? Perhaps twenty. And yet it all seems limitless." - The Sheltering Sky, Paul Bowles (1949).
on “Parent time” ↗