Born in New York in 1910, Paul Bowles is considered one of the most remarkable American authors of the twentieth century. He studied music with composer Aaron Copland before moving to Tangier, Morocco, with his wife, Jane. His first novel, The Sheltering Sky, was a bestseller in the 1950s and was made into a film by Bernardo Bertolucci in 1990. Bowles's prolific career included many musical compositions, novels, collections of short stories, and books of travel, poetry, and translations.

As well as running travel classics publisher Eland, Barnaby Rogerson has written, amongst books, A Traveller's History of North Africa (Weidenfeld, 1998), and put together several collections: one of Moroccan travel literature, Marrakech, the Red City (Sickle Moon, 2003), a pocket edition of English Orientalist verse, Desert Air, and a collection of contemporary travel writing, Meetings with Remarkable Muslims (Eland 2005).