Paul Bowles

Paul Bowles grew up in Queens, New York, the only child of a cold and domineering dentist; his mother read him Hawthorne and Poe. He was reading at three and writing stories at four; at 17 a poem of his appeared in the Paris avant-garde journal “transition”. In 1929 he dropped out of the University of Virginia and sailed to Paris with a one-way ticket.

He studied composition with Aaron Copland, who was also his lover; Bowles later said Copland was, after his wife, the most important person in his life. In Paris he joined Gertrude Stein’s circle, and on her advice travelled with Copland to Tangier in 1931. In Berlin he met Christopher Isherwood, who is said to have named the character Sally Bowles after him. Back in New York he became a respected composer, writing music for plays by Tennessee Williams and productions by Orson Welles.

In 1938 he married the writer Jane Auer. It was an unconventional marriage: both had relationships with people of their own sex, but they remained deeply attached to each other until Jane’s death in 1973.

In 1947 Bowles settled in Tangier, where he lived for the rest of his life. His first novel, “The Sheltering Sky” (1949), about an American couple lost in the Sahara, became a bestseller and was later filmed by Bernardo Bertolucci. He wrote stories, novels and travel writing, recorded traditional Moroccan music and translated Moroccan storytellers. His home became a magnet for Beat writers such as Allen Ginsberg and William S. Burroughs. He died in Tangier in 1999, aged 88.