About the book: 2007 / Dr. Taylor Slade and his young wife go to Panama to relieve boredom. A chance meeting changes not only their plans, but also their fate: step by step they plunge deeper into the quagmire of ominous hallucinations. For the first time in Russian translation, the latest novel by the famous American prose writer Paul Bowles, a masterpiece of the era of psychedelic experiments. When I wrote Up Above the World, I smoked hashish and then went into the woods for the day with a pen and pad. The title of the novel is a line from a children's song, the next phrase of which, “So high,” acquired a second, narcotic meaning in the 60s. If people ask me which of my novels is my favorite, I always answer, “Above the World,” because I was able to say everything I wanted to say so clearly and concisely. Paul Bowles In The Sheltering Sky, Bowles talks about the gradual destruction of the psyche of two American tourists in North Africa. In his fourth novel, “Up Above the World,” he again addresses the same theme, only the scenery is different—Central America. His heroes are average Americans who naively believe that money and common sense will protect them from any adversity. Bowles is great at building tension so that small, seemingly innocent details culminate in a scream of horror. In the gardens that Bowles paints, a vulture invariably lurks, waiting for prey. The New York Times