Paul Bowles's classic collection of short stories, available in a
deluxe paperback edition--part of Ecco's Art of the Story series.
"All the tales are a variety of detective story," wrote Bowles of this,
his first short story collection, "in which the reader is the detective;
the mystery is in the motivation for the characters'' behavior." In such
stories as "A Distant Episode" and How Many Midnights," Bowles pushes
human character beyond socially defined limits and maps a transformed
(often horribly transformed) reality.
Bowles captures the duality of human frailty and cruelty in these
seventeen taut and atmospheric tales, written between 1939 and 1949.
Brutal and gorgeous, visceral yet perceptive, this timeless collection
is "one of the most profound, beautifully wrought, and haunting
collections in our literature. . . at once austere, witty, violent, and
sensuous. . . . His language has a purity of line, a poise and authority
entirely its own, capable of instantly modulating from farce to horror
without a ruffle" (Tobias Wolff).