In the shortest form, the content of this book can be conveyed by the famous phrase about the East, which will never come together with the West. The world of the Maghreb in the energetic, lapidary stories of the outstanding American, who lived for half a century in North Africa and wrote the novel “Under the Cover of Heaven” about it, appears cruel, sucking and completely unlike anything else. On the narrow Arab streets, honor still fights with cowardice, and betrayal with loyalty; it’s just that against an exotic background these collisions become sharper and more prominent.

In the new century, when we have entered into an endless and irreconcilable conflict with the Islamic world, the life and books of Paul Bowles acquire special significance. He lived almost the entire second half of the 20th century in Morocco. No American writer has immersed himself in Arab culture for so long. Like Joseph Conrad and his hero Marlowe, Bowles journeyed into the heart of darkness. Allen Hibbard Like all great travelers, Paul Bowles created his own country. Although in his books it is located in North Africa or Latin America, its true location is the Tropic of Magic. For Bowles, magic is the secret connection between the natural world and human consciousness. It can only be found intuitively, which is why Bowles spent almost his entire life dreaming about it, in fear and wonder, in the hope of deciphering a code that would give him “wisdom and ecstasy - and perhaps death itself.” Gavin Lambert Bowles’ Manner you will recognize it instantly, because it is different from everything that we are familiar with in literature. Among the writers of the second half of the 20th century, Bowles had no rivals. Gore Vidal