Books: Sex & Sand

THE SHELTERING SKY (318 pp.)—Paul Bowles—New Directions ($2.75).

The marriage of Porter and Katherine Moresby was obviously a flop and their North African jaunt was bringing out the worst in it. In the little Arab town of Bou Noura, they lay on a hotel bed fully clothed, getting drunk on a bottle of Scotch. A mosquito netting kept off the vicious flies, and as they talked, the star-studded African twilight fell and native drums kept up an insistent rhythm. Being wealthy and intense young New York intellectuals, Kit and Port Moresby glibly fell into lingo so appropriate that Noel Coward might have...

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