Abstract

In “The Sheltering Sky,” Paul Bowles does acknowledge the failure of the imperialist project but does not see in the natives, whom he ossifies and whose land he romanticizes, a possibility of an alternative epistemology to that of Western culture. On the contrary, his romantic ethos echoes that of an Orientalistic discourse. While most critics believe that Bowles was mostly interested in questioning all existence and not in comparing civilizations, we strongly argue that this kind of reading obfuscates the text’s deep structure. On the surface, Bowles provides an opportunity for one world view that manifests itself in existentialism, but on a deeper level, this manifestation happens at the expense of a real native presence and in the absence of the possibility of the natives’ being a source of knowledge.