This volume includes twenty-five interdisciplinary essays on Paul Bowles’s literary and musical work. The legendary author – a North-American expatriate writer and composer, and a cult figure who, according to Norman Mailer “... let in the murder, the drugs, the incest, the death of the square, the end of civilization” – and his artistic output, are explored here by leading contemporary scholars. They seek alternative and multiple perspectives of his work through the dynamics of music and literature, avant-garde film and the No wave scene, torture studies and security, Islamic studies, modernism and surrealism. Following the international conference “Do You Bowles?” held in Lisbon, in 2010, which celebrated Paul Bowles’s 100th birthday, this collection shows how Bowles’s work engages creatively with his predecessors and a variety of perspectives, by rethinking modes of consciousness and of artistic and cross-cultural potential that still inspire todays’ artists and scholars, both as a writer as well as a composer.

The editor set up a webpage dedicated to the book: http://www.doyoubowles.org/