"In this wonderfully engaging and informative collection we hear the voice of a different Paul Bowles. Writing on a wide range of subjects--jazz, film music, classical music, popular music, ethnic music--he is direct, opinionated, incisive, analytical, humorous, and passionate."—Millicent Dillon, author of You Are Not I: A Portrait of Paul Bowles

It's an easy enough job if one has something to say, Paul Bowles remarked in a letter to his mother about his first foray into music criticism. And Paul Bowles, indeed, had plenty to say about music. Though known chiefly as a writer of novels and stories, Paul Bowles (1910-99) thought of himself first and foremost as a composer.

A stunning volume of essays, original articles & reviews, excerpts from travel journals, & images: the first book ever to focus exclusively on Paul Bowles' career as a composer. Documents & evokes the period during which Bowles was primarily a composer, & includes an incisive new interview with Philip Ramey in which Bowles looks back on his musical career. This is the first volume of a series to be published in conjunction with music festivals organized by Eos Music Inc. in New York.

Paul Bowles began travelling the moment he could - leaving America as a teenager to visit Gertrude Stein in Paris. He settled in Morocco after the war, and for thirty years travelled in North Africa, Central America, Southeast Asia, Indian and Sri Lanka (where he bought an island). He wrote articles, essays and journals along the way - writing which ranks with his novels in its astute observation, dry wit and impeccable prose. Travels brings together for the first time Paul Bowles's travel writing and journals. It includes the full text of his book Their Heads Are Green along with thirty other pieces, previously unpublished in book form. They are accompanied by fifty photos from the Bowles archive.

A Distant Episode contains the best of Paul Bowles's short stories, as selected by the author. An American cult figure, Bowles has fascinated such disparate talents as Norman Mailer, Allen Ginsberg, Truman Capote, William S. Burroughs, Gore Vidal, and Jay McInerney.

Collected interviews with the author of The Sheltering Sky, Let It Come Down, and The Spider's House