London, Lehmann, (1949). The first edition of Bowles's landmark first novel, about Western youths encountering the unfamiliar, and themselves, in North Africa. 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 exposed his characters, and by extension his readers, to the alien cultures of the desert and also to the psychotropic drugs prevalent in that part of the world. Printed in an edition of only 4000 copies. This copy has a slight spine slant and foxing to the page edges; near fine in a very good, spine-tanned dust jacket with a tear to the lower front spine fold and a few small edge chips. A cheaply produced postwar book, this is a better than usual copy. [#027860] SOLD