This book rises from a site-specific reconsideration of the Bowles, the Beats, and Tangier that was convened in Tangier 2008. Great debate ensued, much of it centered around the complex tensions between aesthetics and ethics. The main questions that arose include: What were these American writers doing in Tangier? What kinds of interactions did they have with Moroccans? How much were they aware of their own position of privilege and vital local political issues? Specifically, questions were raised about Burroughs and his relationship to Moroccan boys, and about the relationship between Paul Bowles and the Moroccan writers and storytellers whose work he translated and helped to publish in the West. Were these relationships exploitative? This volume includes sixteen sections contributed by leading literary critics from around the world. The titles and authors include: "A Moveable Feast" by Allen Hibbard; "Language, Noise, Silence: Communication and Community in Paul Bowles' Let It Come Down" by Barry Tharaud; "Sky, Desert, and Infinity: Time, Space, and Self in The Sheltering Sky" by Gozde Pelivan; "The Gothic Mode in Paul Bowles" by Zoubida Hamdaoui; "Why was Marcel Proust's Le Temps Retrouve such and important book for Paul Bowles"? by Celia Wallhead; "Paul Bowles: Mixing Codes and Cross Borders" by Marjorie Kanter; "Paul Bowles: Auter in absentia?" by Mohammad Jadir; "'So Are You Still Writing About Kif?' Paul Bowles' A Hundred Camels in th Courtyard: Modernist Literary Innovations and 'Post' Realism: The Makings of Orient Counterculture" by Raj Chanderplasty; "Beat(ing) Tangier: Transgression and Displacement in the Writings of Paul Bowles" by Maria Porras Sanchez; "Aestheticizing the Revolution: William S. Burroughs in Tangier" by Kurt Hemmer; "Half a Tsphah: Kerouac's Haiku in Tangier" by Regina Weinreich; "Interzone et labyrinthe: William Burroughs and Mohammad Choukri a Tanger" by Marianna Salvioli; Joanne Kyger's Desecheo Notebook and the Feminization of the Interzone" by Amy L. Friedman; Rereading Jane Bowles: Between Feminist and Postcolonial Discourses" by Mieke Kolk; "'The Third Mind' of William S. Burroughs and Brion Gysin" by Antje von Graevitz; "'Paris is about the last place...': William Burroughs In and Out of Paris and Tangier, 1958-1960" by Andrew Hussey.