Paul Bowles’ The Sheltering Sky is about a wealthy American couple, Port and Kit Moresby, travelling in Africa soon after World War Two. In a snobby sort of way, Port considers himself a traveller rather than a tourist, on a more meaningful journey than someone who relaxes at beach resorts and maybe pops into the occasional museum. He wants to live with the local people, eat their food, speak a few words of the language, contract their picturesque diseases, neglecting vaccination to allow for a really authentic experience. By the end of the book, Kit in particular totally immerses herself in local culture. Suffice to say both Port and Kit’s attempts to escape their own society fail in the nastiest way possible.

I was thinking about this riding to work, a type of journey which would count as neither travel nor tourism, but, whisper it, commuting. In Sheltering Sky terms, if traveller is at the top of the scale, with tourist beneath, then commuter must lurk below day-tripper and Sunday driver at the very bottom of the barrel.

Towards the end of my ride, I passed a branch of Nationwide Building Society. In the window there was an enigmatic poster displaying three words: ‘Going, going, nowhere’, I think referencing the fact that the branch would not be closing any time soon, unlike other establishments on the rapidly changing modern high street.

How ironic that my commute had revealed a poster displaying words summing up The Sheltering Sky for a struggling reviewer.

A commute is not such an inappropriate journey to be taking while considering this book. In a sense the regular, unremarkable trip to work is the most epic of voyages, made in daylight or darkness depending on the season, in rain, sun, sleet or snow, going on for years, repetitive and yet never the same twice. It’s almost like that scene in The Time Machine where the time travelling vehicle does not move, while the world changes around it.

Similar contradiction surrounds Port and Kit’s journey. We discover early on that they go to Africa with the aim of repairing their crumbling marriage. But Port, fearful of the responsibilities that a committed marriage would involve, half-unconsciously sabotages the whole project by bringing along a young male friend, with whom Kit might very well have an affair. From this shaky starting point, the travellers ride on bone-shaking night buses, chaotic trains, and meandering camel convoys over endless dunes. There is even a bike excursion. There are horrible accommodations, illness and madness in unfamiliar and dramatic landscapes. It’s truly a hellish trip.

And yet, all that being said, there is, believe it or not, a strange reassurance to be found. The world of The Sheltering Sky is undoubtedly vast and hazardous, but it is actually hard to get lost there. The journey designed to both save and sabotage a marriage has accelerator and hand-break working against each other, so the car does not move. The whole trip is like this. It goes a long way and doesn’t move at all. So yes, in the physical sense the travellers go places, but in other ways not so much. There is no gone after all the going.

‘The Sahara’s a small place really, when you come right down to it. People don’t just disappear there. It’s not like it is here in the city.’

So, a beautifully written, bleak and sometimes harrowing book, which offers an unexpected reassurance, that you can take the longest journey and be home again in time for tea