Books

(New York): New Directions, 1949. Very good plus in very good jacket.. Inscribed first US edition of Bowles's first novel, the grim and enduring twentieth-century classic of alienated Americans wandering through North Africa towards destruction. Bowles's masterpiece, often praised as pitiless and dazzling, like the sun — beautiful, but not good for the eyes — was written in several Algerian hotel bedrooms over a period of nine months. "My idea was that the people would keep moving into the desert," he explained to Jay McInerney, "that one would get ill and die, and at that point it would write itself." Once completed, Bowles sent the book to Doubleday, who didn't want it: "They said, 'We asked for a novel.' They didn't consider it a novel." New Directions was happy to publish it for "a postwar reading public that was still shockable" (Theroux), and as a reading public loves to be shocked, it became a bestseller. 8'' x 5.25''. Original tan cloth. In original unclipped…