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Dr Slade and his wife are on holiday in Latin America when
they meet Grove, a young man of striking good looks and charm
and his beautiful seventeen-year-old mistress. An apparently
chance encounter, it opens the door to a nightmare as the
Slades find themselves being slowly sucked in by lives whose
relevance to their own they cannot understand.
Oiled by a dangerous cocktail of drugs and dark relationships,
it lures the Slades on another journey: a terrifying trip
where the only guides are fantasy, hallucination and death
. . .
Brilliantly written, with the poetic control that has always
characterised Bowles’ work, Up Above the World is
a masterpiece of cold, relentless terror.
‘Sex, drugs, fantasies and the machinery of derangement
. . . Bowles’ overpowering void descends on the mind
and heart like a hypnotic spell.’ – New York
Times Book Review
‘Very, very good.’ – Listener
‘An absorbing, tremendously written novel.’ – Vogue
‘The extreme beauty of Bowles’s writing, his vibrant
response to colour and sound, make [him] a “must”
to anyone on the watch for outstanding talent.’ – Sunday
Times
‘An elaborate atmospheric build-up . . . Paul Bowles
writes powerfully.’ – The Times
‘The landscape shivers with nastiness.’ – The Guardian
PAUL BOWLES (1910 – 1999) was born in New York and
came to Europe in 1931 to study music with Aaron Copland.
In 1938 he married Jane Auer, herself a gifted writer, who
was to achieve literary fame under her married name of Jane
Bowles. After the war they settled in Tangier, which became
their permanent home. Paul Bowles is the author of The
Sheltering Sky, which has since become a modern classic
and which was filmed in 1990 by Bernardo Bertolucci. His
other books include Let It Come Down, Points in
Time and The
Spider’s House.
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