Bowles' classic collection of eight travel essays, originally published in the 1950s, mostly about people and life in North Africa. The globe-skipping essays also include a chapter on tea plantations in Sri Lanka ("Fish Traps and Private Business"), a riff on South American parrots ("All Parrots Speak"), his travels in India ("Notes Mailed at Nagercoil") and thoughts on traveling to Istanbul with a Moroccan ("A Man Must Not Be Very Moslem"). Most of the articles were originally published in Holiday -- and the essays are much brighter and more affectionate than Bowles' fiction. The title is from a poem by Edward Lear: "Far and few, far and few, Are the lands where the Jumblies live; Their heads are green and their hands are blue, And they went to sea in a Sieve."  (MRC60, $13.95)