["The Spider's House" was written] by the author of "The Sheltering Sky," but it is the product of a far more mature and more delicate mind. The Morocco Mr. Bowles described in "The Sheltering Sky" was a papery playground in which moral tourists took holidays from Protestant sexual ethics…. It was only the excellence of the writing that made this excursion into triviality tolerable. In ["The Spider's House"], Mr. Bowles writes with as much grace and sharpness of line as ever…. It is an unusually successful description of the erosion of private lives by public events. The creation of the awareness of gathering crisis and its movement from background to foreground has rarely been better done…. [It is] moreover, a thoroughly sound piece of political reporting and an admirable treatment in depth of the Moroccan crisis…. Altogether, "The Spider's House" is an impressive combination of the use of...