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Any ideas?

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  • 09-07-2008 3:13pm
    #1
    BurnsCarpenter
    Registered Users Posts: 552 ✭✭✭


    Ok, not much to go on here but this is really annoying me.

    I read something a few years back - either a short story or maybe a story within a novel.

    A Western tourist is captured by a nomadic tribe in North Africa (probably).
    He is kept captive by them for years and eventually loses his mind, and the story ends with him escaping and running into the desert.

    Does it ring a bell for anybody?


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    #2
    AJG
    Registered Users Posts: 348 ✭✭AJG


    'A Distant Episode' by Paul Bowles. Its a short story and probably his most famous. Written in a very detached style and very jarring. I'd be 99% sure this is what your refferring to.


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    #3
    BurnsCarpenter
    Registered Users Posts: 552 ✭✭✭BurnsCarpenter


    AJG wrote: »
    'A Distant Episode' by Paul Bowles. Its a short story and probably his most famous. Written in a very detached style and very jarring. I'd be 99% sure this is what your refferring to.


    Sir, I salute you. :)
    Looking at the wikipedia entry, that's definitely it.
    Don't even recognise the name - must have come across it in an anthology.


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    #4
    AJG
    Registered Users Posts: 348 ✭✭AJG


    Its usually his most anthologised story. Its in the Oxford Book of American Short Stories. Most of his short stories are worth reading. Penguin do a collection, Ecco do a more comprehensive one and Peter Owen publishing in the UK publish most of his lesser known works.


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