SPIDER'S HOUSE

by BOWLES, Paul

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Description

Black Sparrow, 1991. Trade paperback. Near Fine. Faint touches of cover soil, tiny errant ink mark on spine, no names or creases. Appears unread. ISBN: 0876855451

Book summary

Paul Bowles's novel THE SPIDER'S HOUSE (1955), like so much of his work, is set in Morocco--this one in 1954, during the Moroccan struggle for independence. In exploring his perennial theme of the difficulty of understanding between cultures, Bowles has created a psychological thriller that takes us into the mind of both an American writer named John Stenham and an illiterate and impoverished 15-year-old Muslim terrorist, Amar, whose life is centered on Islam and who provides Bowles's nuanced and often surprising view of the "other." As the paths of these two, inevitably, cross in the troubled city of Fez, Bowles illuminates not only his subtly drawn characters but an important episode in Morocco's history. He also provides ever-relevant insights into the nature of terrorism. The title of the novel comes from the Koran: "The likeness of those who choose other patrons than Allah is as the likeness of the spider when she taketh unto herself a house, and lo! the frailest of all houses is the spider's house, if they but knew."