Resultaten voor 'paul bowles'

1. Paul Bowles

A Hundred Camels in the Courtyard

These are 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 kif, 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 "[W]riters and artists such as Williams, Jack Kerouac, Francis Bacon, Christopher Isherwood, Truman Capote, William S. Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg to Tangier. . .sought Bowles as an oracle, a writer whose work demonstrated its author as an original who saw farther, deeper, and clearer, and who refused to flinch."--The Australian Paul Bowles (1910-1999) was an expatriate composer, author, and translator. His other famous literary works include The Sheltering Sky, Travels: Collected Writings 1950-1993, and Without Stopping

1. Rodrigo Rey Rosa

Dust on Her Tongue

Set in Guatemala, these spare and beautiful tales are linked by themes of magic, violence, and the fragility of existence. Paul Bowle's translation perfectly captures Rey Rosa's stories of the haunted lives of ordinary people in present-day Central America. "A genuinely surprising and original set of stories…a sense of violent unease shading into terror drifts up from every line…his writing has a sharp, almost sadistic edge." —The Times Literary Supplement "Compelling in the extreme…these twelve tales (that) boast of hidden dangers and lurking terrors, are written in a deceptively undramatic style, with masterful restraint. Stories that continue to disturb and delight long after they are laid to rest." —Blitz Twelve tales--many evoking the uncanny, most with surprise endings--explore how people seek to gain power from others. . . . Rey Rosa writes about danger and precarious stability in an effective, straightforward style." —Kirkus Reviews Rodrigo Rey Rosa (born November 4, 1958) is a Guatemalan writer. He has based many of his writings and stories on legends and myths that are indigenous to Latin American as well as North Africa. A number of Rey Rosa's works have been translated into English, including; The Path Doubles Back (by Paul Bowles), "The Pelcari Project," The Beggar's Knife, The African Shore, and Severina.

1. Rodrigo Rey Rosa

The Beggar's Knife

"The Beggar’s Knife was originally subtitled '24 strange tales' in the English translation by Paul Bowles, published by City Lights Books in 1985. This collection of short stories was originally written in Spanish and was published a year later in their original language in a Guatemala that was returning to democracy. In its Spanish version, The Beggar’s Knife was composed of 25 intense and enigmatic short stories. It included 'The Path Doubles Back' which, at seven pages, was the longest. Rarely in Guatemala’s literary history (probably since Asturias’ Legends of Guatemala) has a writer’s debut entailed such a promise. Rey Rosa’s first book was evidence of a mature and new style of writing. The fantastic tendency and the precise and macabre style in The Beggar’s Knife immediately distanced Rey Rosa from the rest of Guatemalan writers, who persevered with a literal realism to address the armed conflict and social disparities. Rey Rosa’s tales seemed eager to capture 'the possible activity of the unconscious,' in the author’s own words, uncanny events that occurred on the boundary between dreams and reality. However, given Guatemala’s sociopolitical reality at the time, the tales were plagued by acts of vengeance, threats of parricide, nightmares and violent deaths. The narratives, 'like the tricks of a magician,' were a mixture of the magical and the perverse.”—Ronald Flores, The Latin American Review of Books

1. Isabelle Eberhardt

The Oblivion Seekers

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 dependent upon chance. It is the inescapable chain of events that has brought me to this point, rather than I who have caused these things to happen." Her life seems haphazard, at the mercy of caprice, but her writings prove otherwise. She did not make decisions; she was impelled to take action. Her nature combined an extraordinary singlness of purpose and an equally powerful nostalgia for the unattainable."—Paul Bowles, preface. "One of the strangest human documents that a woman has given the world."—Cecily Mackworth, I Came Out of France Isabelle Eberhardt (1877-1904) was an explorer who lived and traveled extensively throughout North Africa. She wrote of her travels in numerous books and French newspapers, including Nouvelles Algériennes [Algerian News] (1905), Dans l'Ombre Chaude de l'Islam [In the Hot Shade of Islam] (1906) and Les journaliers [The Day Laborers] (1922). Paul Bowles has taped and translated numerous strange legends and lively stories recounted by Mrabet: Love with a Few Hairs (novel), The Lemon (novel), The Boy Who Set Fire (stories), Harmless Poisons, Blameless Sins (stories), The Beach Café & Look & Move On (autobiography) and The Big Mirror (novella).

1. Mohammed Mrabet

M'Hashish

“Ah,” said Hassan, “I don’t believe in the world. There’s another world where life is different." These are stories of that world. The word m’hashish (equivalent in Moghrebi of “behashished” or “full of hashish”) is used not only in a literal sense, but also figuratively, to describe a person whose behavior seems irrational or unexpected. The tales here deal with some of the possible results, desirable and questionable, of being in that state. Mohammed Mrabet was born in Tangier in 1936. Since meeting in the early 1960's, Paul Bowles has taped and translated numerous strange legends and lively stories recounted by Mrabet: Love with a Few Hairs (novel), The Lemon (novel), The Boy Who Set Fire (stories), Harmless Poisons, Blameless Sins (stories), The Beach Café & Look & Move On (autobiography) and The Big Mirror (novella). After moving back to Tangier after living in New York for four years, Mrabet resumed his role as a fisherman and began painting. He continues to paint while living in the Souani area of Tangier.

1. Paul Bowles

Let It Come Down