The dilemma of the outsider in an alien society, and the gap in understanding between cultures, are recurrent themes of Paul Bowles’s writings. In this novel, set in Fez, Morocco during that country's 1954 nationalist uprising, they are dramatized with brutal honesty. Relevant to today’s political situation in the Middle East and elsewhere, richly descriptive of its setting, and uncompromising in its characterizations, The Spider’s House is possibly Bowles’s best, most beautifully subtle novel.