London, Lehmann, (1949). The first edition of Bowles's landmark first novel, about three young Westerners encountering the alien culture of North Africa, to their ultimate misfortune. One of the seminal novels of the Beat generation and an influential book in the decades since. One critic commented that Bowles was "a master of cruelty and isolation and the ironies of the search for meaning in an inadequately understood environment." Bowles wrote the novel after moving to Tangier, where he spent most of his life. His home became a destination for other Western writers and artists, and for many of them probably their first full encounter with a non-Western culture. Bowles traveled to the desert to write the book, which is fundamentally about the encounter with "the Other," and the limits of not only one's knowledge but most especially the knowledge of the extent of one's ignorance. Doubleday commissioned the book and paid Bowles an advance and then refused the manuscript when he submitted it. He had to return his advance and John Lehmann in the U.K. printed the novel in an edition of only 4000 copies; it was later published in a small edition in the U.S. by New Directions. Filmed by Bernardo Bertolucci 41 years after publication. Upper corners bumped, sunning to board edges; near fine in a near fine dust jacket with light edge wear. A nice copy of a book that shows wear readily, as many of the UK books from the early postwar years do. [#029573] SOLD