
The Sheltering Sky
A Novel
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Narrated by:
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Saskia Maarleveld
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By:
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Paul Bowles
About this listen
Audio edition of the landmark of 20th Century literature, by acclaimed author Paul Bowles
“The Sheltering Sky is one of the most original, even visionary, works of fiction to appear in the twentieth century.” —Tobias Wolff
""It stands head and shoulders above most other novels published in English since World War II.” —New Republic
In this classic work of psychological terror, Paul Bowles examines the ways in which Americans apprehend other cultures--and the ways in which their incomprehension destroys them. The story of three American travelers adrift in the cities and deserts of North Africa after World War II, The Sheltering Sky is at once merciless and heartbreaking in its compassion. It etches the limits of human reason and intelligence--perhaps even the limits of human life --when they touch the unfathomable emptiness and impassive cruelty of the dessert.
©1949 Paul Bowles (P)2022 HarperCollins PublishersListeners also enjoyed...
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Story
Their Heads are Green, Their Hands are Blue deals largely with places in the world that few Westerners have ever heard of, much less seen—places as yet unencumbered by the trappings, luxuries, and corruptions of modern civilization. Bowles is a sympathetic and discerning observer of these alien cultures, and his eyes and ears are especially alert both to what is bizarre and what is wise in the civilizations in which he settles.
By: Paul Bowles
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The Storyteller of Casablanca
- By: Fiona Valpy
- Narrated by: Elizabeth Knowelden
- Length: 9 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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Morocco, 1941. With France having fallen to Nazi occupation, twelve-year-old Josie has fled with her family to Casablanca, where they await safe passage to America. Life here is as intense as the sun, every sight, smell and sound overwhelming to the senses in a city filled with extraordinary characters. It’s a world away from the trouble back home—and Josie loves it. Seventy years later, another new arrival in the intoxicating port city, Zoe, is struggling—with her marriage, her baby daughter and her new life as an expat in an unfamiliar place.
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Sweet and profound
- By EYM on 11-15-21
By: Fiona Valpy
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The Lioness of Morocco
- By: Julia Drosten, Christiane Galvani - translator
- Narrated by: Henrietta Meire
- Length: 12 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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Independent-minded Sibylla Spencer feels trapped in 19th-century London, where her strong will and progressive views have rendered her unmarriageable. Still single at 23, she is treated like a child and feels stifled in her controlling father's house. When Benjamin Hopkins, an ambitious employee of her father's trading company, shows an interest in her, she realizes marriage is her only chance to escape.
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The Lioness o Morocco
- By MM on 06-23-17
By: Julia Drosten, and others
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Secret Son
- By: Laila Lalami
- Narrated by: Fajer Al-Kaisi
- Length: 7 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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Casablanca's stinking alleys are the only home that 19-year-old Youssef El-Mekki has ever known. Raised by his mother in a one-room home, he dreams of escape - until, one day, the father he thought dead turns out to be very much alive and whisks him from the slums into the luxurious life of Casablanca's elite. But as he leaves the poverty of his childhood behind him, he comes up against a starkly unglittering reality...
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Intimate story of identity and family
- By Steve on 02-03-23
By: Laila Lalami
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A High Wind in Jamaica
- By: Richard Hughes
- Narrated by: Michael Maloney
- Length: 6 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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Set in the 19th century against a backdrop of island life and the vast surrounding seas, A High Wind in Jamaica is the gripping story of the Bas-Thornton children, whose parents send them back to England following a hurricane in the postcolonial Caribbean they call home. Having set sail, the children quickly fall into the hands of pirates. As their voyage continues, things take an awful turn
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Prose that reads like a Child's Fever Dream
- By Darwin8u on 01-02-17
By: Richard Hughes
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The Delicate Prey
- By: Paul Bowles
- Narrated by: Courtney Patterson, Raphael Corkhill
- Length: 9 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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“All the tales are a variety of detective story,” wrote Bowles of this, his first short story collection, “in which the reader is the detective; the mystery is in the motivation for the charcters’ behavior.” In such stories as “A Distant Episode” and How Many Midnights,” Bowles pushes human character beyond socially defined limits and maps a transformed (often horribly transformed) reality.
By: Paul Bowles
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The Heather Blazing
- A Novel
- By: Colm Toibin
- Narrated by: Tim Gerard Reynolds
- Length: 8 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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Eamon Redmond is a judge in Ireland’s high court, a completely legal creature who is just beginning to discover how painfully unconnected he is from other human beings. With effortless fluency, Colm Tóibín reconstructs the history of Eamon’s relationships - with his father, his first "girl", his wife, and the children who barely know him - and he writes about Eamon’s affection for the Irish coast with such painterly skill that the land itself becomes a character. The result is a novel of stunning power.
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A Quiet but Lovely Story
- By Cariola on 03-29-13
By: Colm Toibin
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Culture Smart! Morocco
- The Essential Guide to Customs & Culture
- By: Jillian York
- Narrated by: Charles Armstrong
- Length: 2 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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Morocco is a land of spectacular scenery with a rich history and heady with tantalizing scents and colorful sights. The call of the muezzin seems to draw people from every corner of the globe. In 1956, Morocco gained independence from French colonial rule and was jolted into the 20th century. Today, it is a country in transition - a unique blend of Arab, African, and European ways of life. The teeming cities have an air of sophistication and joie de vivre, but life in rural areas has stayed much the same.
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Good prep for my 1st trip to Morocco
- By Fish on 10-18-21
By: Jillian York
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Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits
- By: Laila Lalami
- Narrated by: Fajer Al-Kaisi
- Length: 4 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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As four Moroccans illegally cross the Strait of Gibraltar in an inflatable boat headed for Spain, author Laila Lalami asks: What has driven them to risk their lives? And will the rewards prove to be worth the danger? There's Murad, a gentle, unemployed man who's been reduced to hustling tourists around Tangier; Halima, who's fleeing her drunken husband and the slums of Casablanca; Aziz, who must leave behind his devoted wife in hope of securing work in Spain; and Faten, a student and religious fanatic whose faith is at odds with an influential man determined to destroy her future.
By: Laila Lalami
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The Unbearable Lightness of Being
- A Novel
- By: Milan Kundera, Michael Henry Heim - translator
- Narrated by: Richmond Hoxie
- Length: 9 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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A young woman is in love with a successful surgeon, a man torn between his love for her and his incorrigible womanizing. His mistress, a free-spirited artist, lives her life as a series of betrayals—while her other lover, earnest, faithful, and good, stands to lose everything because of his noble qualities. In a world where lives are shaped by irrevocable choices and fortuitous events, and everything occurs but once, existence seems to lose its substance, its weight. Hence we feel “the unbearable lightness of being."
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Love, Politics, and Strange Bedfellows
- By Mel on 07-01-12
By: Milan Kundera, and others
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Prom Mom
- A Novel
- By: Laura Lippman
- Narrated by: Andi Arndt
- Length: 8 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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Amber Glass has spent her entire adult life putting as much distance as possible between her and her hometown of Baltimore, where she fears she will forever be known as “Prom Mom”—the girl who allegedly killed her baby on the night of the prom after her date, Joe Simpson, abandoned her to pursue the girl he really liked. But when circumstances bring Amber back to the city, she realizes she can have a second chance—as long as she stays away from Joe, now a successful commercial real estate developer, married to a plastic surgeon, Meredith, to whom he is devoted.
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Like Liberal Rants? You‘lol love this novel…
- By K on 07-31-23
By: Laura Lippman
great narration. engrossing story
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This aside, this is a delightful narration of a marvelous story. It is a story that is one of the best examples of the American flavor of Existentialism, in contrast the the more common French Existentialism of writers like Camus and Sarte. The American flavor is poignantly different but still touches on the basic themes of the meaning vs meaninglessness of life, the almost cosmic horror of existence vs death, and a mood that could only be captured by a long time resident of North Africa, as Paul Bowles was. Without having to say it, he creates a hauntingly beautiful atmosphere of vast emptiness, not only of the desert and sky, but of the soul. One almost feels they can hear the oppressive quiet and wind rustling always present, infecting every aspect of the story.
Be prepared for a hauntingly unsettling ride. There will be no answers, no resolutions handed to you.
This is not an exit.
Classic Work of American 20th Century Fiction
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SKIP INTRO: Spoils entire plot line!
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In search of life’s purpose
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The literary reviews tend to emphasize the despair and angst that drives people like the Bowles and their fictional stand-ins the Harcourts set about by the general malaise brought about by a triumphalist America. That may be true as there tends to be an impulse for young, non-traditionalsist Americans to seek abroad that something that is missing back home. The same is true of the Brits and Aussies who flesh out the characters along with the desert loving French soldiers and administrators who govern French Africa. And while very different, they all seem to have in a common a general loathing for the indigenous people they have chosen to live among, insisting upon maintaining their Western standards of luggage, lodging at food even as they plunge deeper into the less hospitable without even bothering to learn the language of the people they've intruded upon.
Bowles accurately captures this ennui of the far flung expatriate trying to find the place that is uniquely foreign that they can make uniquely theirs always boarding a midnight bus with much to much baggage to find out what is our there on the fathest edge of the map, resolved that they will likely be unhappy there as well.
Well written and narrated by #saskiamaarleveld in #audible .
Fear and Loathing in the Sahara
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Making my first trips to Morocco this year, I decided to listen to it. Love love love this book.
Beautiful. Cerebral.
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Not my type
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