Their Heads Are Green and Their Hands Are Blue: Scenes from the Non-Christian World

An engaging collection of travel essays by the author of The Sheltering Sky

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.

Above all, Bowles is a superb and observant traveler—a born wanderer who finds pleasure in the inaccessible and who cheerfully endures the concomitant hardships with resourcefulness, insight, and humor.

Their Heads are Green and their Hands are Blue is an engaging collection of eight travel essays. Except for one essay on Central America, all of these pieces are concerned with locations in the Hindu, Buddhist, or Islamic worlds. A superb and observant traveler, Paul Bowles was a born wanderer who found pleasure in the inaccessible and who cheerfully endures the concomitant hardships with a matter-of-fact humor.

These essays provide us with Paul Bowles' characteristic insightfulness and bring us closer to a world we frequently hear about, but often find difficult to understand.