First published in 1950, this book is a collection of exemplary short stories that reveal the bizarre, the disturbing, the perilous, and the wise in other civilizations—from one of America’s most important writers of the twentieth century.
“Paul Bowles has opened the world of Hip. He let in the murder, the drugs, the incest, the death of the Square...the call of the orgy, the end of civilization.”—NORMAN MAILER
“Paul Bowles’s sense of what can go wrong is as acute as that of any American writer since Poe....Bowles’s sensibility is classical in its aloofness, his prose as hard-edged and dazzling as a desert landscape at noon.”—JAY McINERNEY
“The Delicate Prey is in fact one of the most profound, beautifully wrought, and haunting collections in our literature....Bowles’s tales arc at once austere, witty, violent, and sensuous. They move with the inevitability of myth.”—TOBIAS WOLFF
“Paul Bowles has opened the world of Hip. He let in the murder, the drugs, the incest, the death of the Square...the call of the orgy, the end of civilization.”—NORMAN MAILER
“Paul Bowles’s sense of what can go wrong is as acute as that of any American writer since Poe....Bowles’s sensibility is classical in its aloofness, his prose as hard-edged and dazzling as a desert landscape at noon.”—JAY McINERNEY
“The Delicate Prey is in fact one of the most profound, beautifully wrought, and haunting collections in our literature....Bowles’s tales arc at once austere, witty, violent, and sensuous. They move with the inevitability of myth.”—TOBIAS WOLFF
