The second volume of the collected works of one of the underrated writers of the 20th century, Paul Bowles, contains texts from the 50s: Latin America gives way to the American hinterland and Bowles’ native New York, and then to the same Arab Africa. At the center of the narrative of some stories is an outcast, a stranger, perceiving the masterfully depicted reality from the outside and with some apprehension. Other stories are more like cruel genre paintings, realistic pictures from life - gloomy, frozen forever, like insects in amber.