Paul Bowlesâs classic collection of short stories
âAll the tales are a variety of detective story,â wrote Bowles of this, his first short story collection, âin which the reader is the detective; the mystery is in the motivation for the charctersâ behavior.â In such stories as âA Distant Episodeâ and How Many Midnights,â Bowles pushes human character beyond socially defined limits and maps a transformed (often horribly transformed) reality.
Bowles captures the duality of human frailty and cruelty in these seventeen taut and atmospheric tales, written between 1939 and 1949. Brutal and gorgeous, visceral yet profound, this timeless collection is âone of the most profound, beautifully wrought, and haunting collections in our literature. . . at once austere, witty, violent, and sensuous. . . . His language has a purity of line, a poise and authority entirely its own, capable of instantly modulating from farce to horror without a ruffleâ (Tobias Wolff).