Published by Cadmus Editions, handsomely set in eversocrisp, a glorious Elzevirs cover featuring lithograph by Austrian artist Hermann Nitsch, and magical symbols taken from a kasr in the bled es Siba. Those who visited Bowles in Tangier often thought of him as a sorcerer, magician, or guru, someone who could ever so cleverly orchestrate the forces around him.

In Paul Bowles, Magic & Morocco Allen Hibbard locates the sources of Bowles's creative genius by considering him as a species of North African magician. This book presents a series of riffs on Bowles's acquaintance with North African customs and culture, other artists and writers affected by Morocco's mysteries, anthropological studies of magic in North Africa, connections between the modern and the primitive, the influence of Lawrence and Conrad on Bowles, Bowles's alchemical processes, the operation of magic in his literary work, the magical properties of drugs, sex and music, the improbable story of Alfred Chester and Paul Bowles, and Hibbard's own account of his pilgrimage to meet the Mage of Morocco.

Hibbard combines his skills as a literary critic, extensive knowledge of Arab culture, and personal experiences with Bowles in Tangier to create a tour de force, contextualizing and explicating a half-century's influence of Arabe al Maghreb. Motivated by friendship, this homage to Bowles breaks loose from traditional generic boundaries, moving from objective criticism, through memoir, toward imaginative literature, with Hibbard addressing Bowles directly, speaking to him beyond the grave.