If I were to describe this book’s essence in two words, I would say doom and gloom, as this is the story of three clueless people, Kit, Port, and Tunner, abroad in Africa after World War II, drifting from city to city. The themes in the novel are detachment, fear, and regret with a hint of prejudice thrown in toward the local cultures.

Their flawed relationships, faulty indifferent personalities, and lack of understanding of the local cultures and the culture clashes become their means of destruction by the end of the novel. The book takes its title from Port’s musings. “How fragile we are under the sheltering sky. Behind the sheltering sky is a vast dark universe, and we're just so small.”

The story begins with Port Moresby awakening in a hotel room in Oran, Algeria. He is the kind of man who’s always on the go, since he’s had a hefty inheritance, and he doesn’t see the necessity for having to work. Kit is Port’s wife and Tunner is their friend who is traveling with them. All three people are alienated from one another in some way and from the secondary characters they make friends with on the voyage, namely a mother and son from Australia, Mrs.Lyle and Eric Lyle.

Port and Kit love each other without actually realizing their own feelings. Tunner has a thing for Kit. All characters including the secondary characters are quirky.

The Novel is divided into three parts:
Book 1: Tea in the Sahara
Book 2: The Earth’s Sharp Edge
Book 3: The Sky

In the first two parts, the protagonist is Port. His dark moods and emotional denseness propel the plot, pulling Kit’s character along even though she is not in agreement with everything while her hopes for Port to connect to her diminish as they go along. Both feel they don't have control over events and they just let whatever happens to happen. It is too late for their relationship to take hold as fate intervenes when they finally realize their love for each other.

The third part of the novel is Kit’s story after she disappears into the desert and becomes the sexual slave of a man she meets in a caravan, who takes her to his family’s compound with his three wives. When she finds her way into freedom and returns to freedom she’s gone mad and unable to speak. Kit, who was already weak, is a broken woman at the end as she disappears into the landscape, before facing Tunner.

The story takes place in different cities in Northern and interior parts of Africa, namely Oran, Boussif, Ain Krorfa, Bou Noura, Sba and Belqassim’s place somewhere away from Algeria.

What is most remarkable in this novel is the author’s strong voice and amazing storytelling. While the point of view is third person omniscient, the author has an amazing knack in going inside the character's heads and presenting their personalities. It is his words and narrative that made me read this novel to its end.

noticing the author's spectacular style and distinct voice.

the way Paul Bowles entered the thought processes of the characters even the lesser ones like Lieutenant D'Armagnac and Captain Broussard, whose reactions to and observations of the main characters and the environs were probably much more reliable than the characters themselves.

who the three main characters were. They were selfish, prejudiced, morose, disloyal to one another and wanting their own ways without even blinking an eye. By this, I don't mean their portrayals as the author was very successful in creating and showing who they were to the readers.

for the local people who had to put up with these characters.

is Paul Bowles 1910-1973, who wrote The Sheltering Sky, his first novel, when he was 38. He wrote dozens of books, including novels, poems, books of stories and translations afterward.

although the characters are gross people, the story far too dark, the novel is a powerful work of art enhanced even more by the author's powerful prose and keen insight.

it is a tragedy and the events in the third part sickened me a bit, but it is up to you. The literary power of the book overrides those events.

This story happens in 1949 when northern Africa was still under French dominion. The story is reminiscent of the existentialist theories and themes as the main characters are high-brow people who travel about with no set agenda and without any real preparation.

In fact, Paul Bowles was the translator of No Exit by Jean Paul Sartre.

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Created Mar 08, 2018 at 6:48pm • Submit your own review...