
Up Above the World
A Novel
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Narrated by:
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Raphael Corkhill
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By:
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Paul Bowles
About this listen
On the terrace of an elaborate hilltop apartment overlooking a Central American capital, four people sit making polite conversation. The American couple -- an elderly physician and his young wife -- are tourists. Their host, whom they have just met, is a young man of striking good looks and charm. The girl, his mistress, is very young and very beautiful. Sitting there, watching the sunset, the Slades seem to be enjoying the sort of fortunate chance encounter that travelers cherish. But amid the civilities and small talk, the host's casual remark to the American woman proves prophetic: "It's not exactly what you think."
Masterfully -- with the poetic control that has always characterized his work -- Paul Bowles leads the reader beneath the surface of hospitality and luxury into a tortuous maze of human relationships and shifting moods, until what seems at first a merely casual encounter is seen to be one rooted in viciousness and horror.
©1966 Paul Bowles (P)2022 HarperCollins PublishersListeners also enjoyed...
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
In Let It Come Down, Paul Bowles plots the doomed trajectory of Nelson Dyar, a New York bank teller who comes to Tangier in search of a different life and ends up giving in to his darkest impulses. Rich in descriptions of the corruption and decadence of the International Zone in the last days before Moroccan independence, Bowles's second novel is an alternately comic and horrific account of a descent into nihilism.
-
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By: Paul Bowles
-
The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test
- By: Tom Wolfe
- Narrated by: Luke Daniels
- Length: 13 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Tom Wolfe - one of the 20th century’s foremost voices in cultural criticism - went from local news reporter to international icon in 1968, with the publication of The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. Now voiced with vivacity and vigor by Audible Hall of Fame narrator Luke Daniels, the non-fiction swan-dive delves into the world of hippies, hedonism, and everything in between.
-
-
Maybe it resonated with a different time and place
- By S. Phillips on 04-11-19
By: Tom Wolfe
-
Big Sur
- By: Jack Kerouac, Aram Saroyan - foreword
- Narrated by: Ethan Hawke
- Length: 6 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this 1962 novel, Kerouac's alter ego, Jack Duluoz, overwhelmed by success and excess, gravitates back and forth between wild binges in San Francisco and an isolated cabin on the California coast where he attempts to renew his spirit and clear his head of madness and alcohol. Only nature seems to restore him to a sense of balance. In the words of Allen Ginsberg, Big Sur "reveals consciousness in all its syntactic elaboration, detailing the luminous emptiness of his own paranoiac confusion".
-
-
Astonishing Ethan Hawke Performance
- By L E Stewart on 11-10-20
By: Jack Kerouac, and others
-
Their Heads Are Green and Their Hands Are Blue
- By: Paul Bowles
- Narrated by: Raphael Corkhill, Mike Ortego, Tom Zahner
- Length: 7 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Their Heads are Green, Their Hands are Blue deals largely with places in the world that few Westerners have ever heard of, much less seen—places as yet unencumbered by the trappings, luxuries, and corruptions of modern civilization. Bowles is a sympathetic and discerning observer of these alien cultures, and his eyes and ears are especially alert both to what is bizarre and what is wise in the civilizations in which he settles.
By: Paul Bowles
-
The Stories of Paul Bowles
- By: Paul Bowles
- Narrated by: Mike Ortego, Raphael Corkhill
- Length: 28 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
An American cult figure, Paul Bowles has fascinated such disparate talents as Norman Mailer, Allen Ginsberg, Truman Capote, William S. Burroughs, Gore Vidal, and Tobias Wolff. From “The Delicate Prey” to “Too Far from Home,” this definitive collection celebrates the Bowles’s masterful artistry in short fiction.
-
-
Superb production of a superb anthology
- By Adam on 10-25-22
By: Paul Bowles
-
Travels
- By: Paul Bowles
- Narrated by: Raphael Corkhill, Mike Ortego, Tom Zahner
- Length: 17 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Travels is a thrilling anthology of the travel writings of Paul Bowles, author of the era-defining post-war novel The Sheltering Sky. The acclaimed essays in Travel—never before collected in a single volume—span more than sixty years and range from Bowles’s early days in Paris to his time spent in Ceylon, Thailand, Kenya, and his expatriate life in Morocco. Insightful, exciting, and evocative, Travels is a stunning collection of rarely seen shorter works—a showcase of the literary artistry of one of the truly great American writers of the twentieth century.
By: Paul Bowles
What listeners say about Up Above the World
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Overall
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- SB
- 09-14-22
Strange
I found both the story and the writing style a bit strange. It seemed like pieces of the story were missing. Not something I would recommend.
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