These are four tales of contemporary life in a land where cannabis, rather than alcohol, customarily provides a way out of the phenomenological world. Thus, of the men in these stories, Salam uses suggestions supplied by smoking kif to rid himself of a possible enemy. He of the Assembly catches himself up in the mesh of his own kif-dream and begins to act it out in reality; Idir's victory over Lahcen is the classical story of the kif-smoker's ability to outwit the drinker. Driss the soldier, with aid of kif, proves the existence of magic to his enlightened superior officer. For all of them the kif-pipe is the means to attaining a state of communication not only with others but above all with themselves.
Com A Missa do Galo, Paul Bowles oferece-nos uma série de contos maravilhosamente escritos, que nos remetem para outras culturas, marcadamente diferentes da nossa. São histórias sobre os conflitos fa
James Lasdun in his introduction calls Paul Bowles 'One of the great outsiders of our time' and isolation is a major theme in these dark and often unsettling stories. An old woman lives in a cave untroubled by the scorpions that crawl over its walls. A splash of water triggers an explosion of violence. A young girl 'remembers' things back to front while the concluding story is presented as six letters written to a bitter, dying man. In the stories that make up this dazzling collection, Bowles creates a world in which the extreme situations the characters find themselves in move relentlessly towards their logical yet disturbing conclusion.
Truman
