Paul Bowles · 1949 · survival

Paul Bowles's 1949 novel. Three Americans drift into North Africa after the war, pushing ever deeper from the Algerian coast into the Sahara in search of something they cannot name. As Port and Kit Moresby travel south into the desert towns, the vastness strips away their bearings - illness, death and the indifferent immensity of the sky dissolving the boundaries of the self.

1. 1
   Oran

   The Algerian port where Port, Kit and Tunner disembark, restless and adrift, and begin to push inland away from the coast and the war-shadowed world they have left.

2. 2
   Bou Noura

   A desert town deeper south where the travelers linger among the oases, the vast Sahara beginning to work on them, unsettling and estranging.

3. 3
   El Gaa

   Far out in the Sahara, where fever overtakes Port at the end of the road, and Kit, unmoored by grief, walks on alone into the desert and disappears into its immensity.