Michelle Green's The Dream at the End of the World is an odd one. Rather than a biography of Paul Bowles as I had been led to believe, or a travel guide to Tangier it is, instead, a focused look at the odd assortment of artists and weirdos who turned up in and around Tangier when Bowles, and occasionally his wife Jane, lived there.

Bowles clearly became a center of strange attraction after he settled in North Africa and the list of famous people who people this book is long indeed: writers; artists, hippies; and spoilt rich people flood the pages of this book almost until ones head spins.

The problem however is that there is no real centre to the book itself. Green attaches to Bowles, and then to Tangier itself, and then to William Burroughs, and then to Brion Gysin all the while really being most interested in Jane Bowles. The prose is clear and the structure is pretty much chronological but while there are wonderful vignettes and beautiful character sketches the text does not hold together. ( )