Paul Bowles is not a one book author, but The Sheltering Sky, published in 1949, stands head and shoulders above his other work. For that matter it stands head and shoulders above most other novels published in English since World War II. The story is brilliantly told against the vast, shimmering, desolate space of the desert, that contains and dominates the action. It is a metaphor without an object. Like a dream, it takes on different meanings depending on the drifting emotions of the characters.

Civilization is the most obvious villain of the novel. It has driven a wedge between the minds and the instincts of the characters. It this is the recurrent theme of pastoral, The Sheltering Sky is a savage pastoral. Its characters do not long for gardens but for a life reduced, like the desert landscape, to its primary elements—to the bedrock realities of food...