Name: Spider's House
ISBN: 9780061137037

Paul Bowles

Set in Fez, Morocco, during that country's 1954 nationalist uprising, The Spider's House is perhaps Paul Bowles's most beautifully subtle novel, richly descriptive of its setting and uncompromising in its characterizations. Exploring once again the dilemma of the outsider in an alien society, and the gap in understanding between cultures—recurrent themes of Paul Bowles's writings—The Spider's House is dramatic, brutally honest, and shockingly relevant to today's political situation in the Middle East and elsewhere.

A Novel

Spider's House

Regret doing this as an audiobook because I couldn’t just revel in Bowles’ prose and my attention began to fade by the end, but nonetheless grand. Happy to own a physical copy that I rescued from the best book section in Frederick that later burnt down - so I can revisit (both).

Jeremy Boyd

Will Vunderink

Having little knowledge of Islam or Morocco's history -- 1954's nationalist uprising in particular -- there was not much for me to grab onto in the novel. Luckily, Bowles' mastery at capturing landscape, light, and desert heat is on full display here, so I had a sense of the environment, but it was hard to grasp the novel's geography when names of places were referred to repeatedly but not contextualized. Likewise I found it hard to invest myself in Amar's story, which makes up most of the novel, though the final scene makes it impossible not to sympathize with the lonely, lost character. Bowles emphasizes the clash of cultures between the West and Islam from Amar's point of view, but it tends to feel a little tired and obvious in 2013 -- and not as illuminating thematically as it could have been. As an ignorant Westerner I found the parts of the book focusing on British and American characters to be the most engaging, mostly because Bowles depicts them as selfish, vain, and petty; they don't accomplish much of anything, but it's entertaining to watch them bicker about their aimless, inconsequential wanderings. 
Even though it's not his most engrossing or approachable novel, The Spider's House is worth reading simply for Bowles' immersion in the culture he devoted himself to -- but read up a bit on Morocco's politics in 1954 first, and have a map on hand.

Spider's House A Novel