THE SPIDER'S HOUSE
First edition of Bowles' fourth book and third novel, a political thriller set among the anti-colonial Moroccan independence movement of the 1950s.
Near fine in a near fine jacket.
"If people are living the same as always, with their bellies full of food, they'll just go on the same way. If they get hungry and unhappy enough, something happens."
While long something of an anomaly among the famous proto-Beat ex-pat writer's oeuvre, SPIDER'S HOUSE has undergone a critical reevaluation over the last two decades of American anti-terror foreign policy. Writing in THE ATLANTIC, Francine Prose observed: "THE SPIDER'S HOUSE ought to top those lists of novels that speak to our present cultural condition [...] the book seems not merely prescient but positively eerie in its evocation of a climate in which every aspect of daily life is affected - and deformed - by the roilings of nationalism and terrorism, by the legacy of colonialism, and by chaotic political strife." A handsome copy of a novel that stands next to Graham Greene's classic published the same year, THE QUIET AMERICAN.
Read more: Francine Prose, "The Coldest Eye," Harper's Magazine (March, 2002); [Miller A7].
New York: Random House, 1955. Publisher's original black cloth. In original unclipped ($3.95) color pictorial jacket designed by Hollis Holland from an illustration by Amy Jones. 406 pages. Touches of rubbing and edgewear to jacket, faint toning to spine. Mild shelfsoil to book. Overall bright and sharp.