The Representation of North Africa in Paul Bowles' Major Works

The writer and composer Paul Bowles one of America’s most famous expatriates died in Tangier on November 18 1999. He had lived there for more than half a century. Bowles’ writings cover the different changes Morocco witnessed stretching from colonial times to independence. Although Bowles wrote for a Western audience he played a great role in bringing attention to Moroccan popular culture. Still Bowles’ writings raise a series of controversies among Moroccan intellectuals. My choice of studying Paul Bowles’ representation1 of North Africa is delimited by my interest in the politico-ideological implication of the literary text and by the fact that Bowles is the most prominent American writer who had lived for more than half a century in Tangier and whose fiction and non-fiction largely deal with North African particularly Moroccan culture and society. “…’culture’ is used to refer to whatever is distinctive about ‘the way of life’ of a people…”.