IntroductionIn brief, The Sheltering Sky (1949) – hereafter referred to as TSS – is an existential novel by American writer Paul Bowles in which a married couple (Port and Kit ) originally from New York together with their friend (Tunner) go to the North African desert immediately after the Second World War to resolve their marital difficulties. But due to their ignorance of the local culture and the imminent dangers that surround them, they soon fall prey to it and the journey becomes treacherous. It is a fiction about postcolonial alienation, culture clash and existential despair that was very successful and sold well. Time magazine introduced the novel into its TIME 100 Best English-lingual Novels from 1923 to 2005 list. In 1990 the novel was adapted by star director Bernardo Bertolucci into a notable film of the same title. Paul Bowles was an “American novelist, poet, writer composer, translator, [classical music] short story writer, and film composer who married the writer Jane Auer (Birch and Hooper 82). He was a harsh critic of Western civilization, of Americanization, of technology, “of mechanization, of pollution, of noise – all things that the twentieth century brought and spread throughout the world” (Caponi, Conversations 184). This led him to physically and psychologically distance himself from America (Perlow 189) and settle in 1947 in Morocco, because it seemed to be more distant from the modern world. After 1948 the couple lived intermittently in Tangier and so the place transformed into a spiritual zone for hippies and members of the Beat Generation1 because Bowles' version of existentialism was central to them. Author Norman Mailer once wrote in Advertisement for Myself that "Paul Bowles opened up the world of the hip. He let murder in,......middle of paper......hip, 2001. Print.Perlow, Lawrence S. Out of Africa and South of the Border: Paul Bowles' Literary Work in the Western Tropics. Drew University, 2008. Ann Arbor: UMI, 2011. Print Google Books 2011. Sawyer-Lauçanno, Christopher. An Invisible Spectator: A Biography of Paul Bowles. New York: Grove Press, 1999. Print. Stewart, David and H. Gene Blocker. New Delhi: Pearson Education .Williams, Tennessee. An Allegory of Man and His Sahara. New York Times Book Review 4 December 1949: Section 7.Web Sources: "I Never Liked to Raise My Voice." Paul Bowles. Network. 1 April 2014. “Beat Generation”. Jalic Inc., 2000-2014. Web. 18 April 2014.