Paul Bowles

Paul Bowles (December 30, 1910 - November 18, 1999), was an American composer, author, and traveler.

Tangier and elsewhere

Also in 1947, he moved permanently to Tangier, and his wife Jane followed him there in 1948. The Bowleses became iconoclasts of the Tangerinos—American and European expatriates centered in Tangier. During the following decade Bowles wrote much of his most famous prose. Prominent literary friends visited Paul and Jane Bowles in Tangier beginning in the late 1940s, including Truman Capote, Tennessee Williams and Gore Vidal. The Beat writers Allen Ginsberg and William S. Burroughs followed in the mid-1950s. In Morocco, Bowles concentrated on writing novels, short stories and travel pieces, and wrote incidental music for nine plays presented by the American School of Tangier. In 1952 Bowles bought the tiny island of Taprobane, off the coast of Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), where he wrote much of his novel The Spider's House, returning to Tangier in the warmer months.

Related Topics:
Tangerinos - Truman Capote - Tennessee Williams - Gore Vidal - Beat - Allen Ginsberg - William S. Burroughs - American School of Tangier - Taprobane - Sri Lanka

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In 1961, Bowles began tape-recording and translating works of Moroccan authors and storie-tellers, including stories by long-time friend Ahmed Yacoubi, Larbi Layachi (under the pseudonym Driss ben Hamed Charhadi), and Mohammed Mrabet. Rather oddly, Bowles spent one term at the English Department of the San Fernando Valley State College in 1968, teaching existentialism and the novel. Most of the time, however, he remained in Tangier with brief interludes elsewhere overseas.

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