by Paul Bowles
First published 2014
In 1987, at a friend's urging, Paul Bowles begins keeping a daily journal in his adopted home of Tangier. For two years he records both significant moments and mundane details of his life in Morocco. The American expatriate writer reflects on how he came to stay in this North African city. He had planned only a brief visit before continuing his travels, but laziness made him postpone his departure. Years passed until one day he realized the world had changed for the worse. More people crowded the planet, hotels had declined, travel had become less comfortable, and beauty had diminished everywhere. Whenever he left Tangier, he found himself missing it immediately. So he remained, not by grand design but through circumstance and growing disillusionment with a deteriorating world. These journal entries capture an artist working with an unfamiliar form, turning his keen eye for the foreign and mysterious toward the rhythms of daily existence in his chosen refuge.
Genres: literary-fiction, 20th-century, autobiography, memoir, non-fiction, biography-memoir, africa, diary
Vibes: atmospheric, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: fish-out-of-water
Setting: Morocco, Tangier
Period: 1987-1989
152 pages · Paperback · Swiat Ksiazki