There are nine stories in [Things Gone and Things Still Here], all but one set in North Africa …, characterized generally by a modest narrative style, rather dry and not inappropriate to the settings. In place of splashy prose and technical nuance, Bowles relies most often on the quality of Moroccan life to carry the story forward. That life is one of villages and tribes, of beggars and servants and holy men, of cafes and kif (hemp) and snake charmers. The impulse behind most stories seems to be a sort of naturalism, with the implicit scientific stance that of a cultural anthropologist.

And what does that impulse reveal, what does Bowles find in the lives of his characters? As the title indicates, a sense of transformation (which takes the form of a linear narrative). In "Allal" a boy with nothing else makes a friend of a snake and they...