From Night Boat to Tangier, a novel published in September by Doubleday.

At the Café Central, in Plaza de la Constitución, he drank café solo and waited. Around him there was the ceaseless hum of the old Andalusians’ talk. They balled up their napkins and threw them to the tiled floor. The old men spat, narrowing their faces. Their skins of almond shade. The air was blue with cigarette smoke that rose in slow drifts. The old ladies wore ankle-length fur coats for the winter sun. They had high, comical arched eyebrows painted on and looked perpetually startled. The…