The work is included in his collections of short fiction The Hours After Noon (1959, Heinemann) and The Time of Friendship (1967, Holt, Rinehart and Winston).
[1][2] Written while Bowles was living in Tangiers, "Doña Faustina" is among several works in the collection that exhibit "a maturation of style and a realization of greater complexity" in his literary talents.
[4] Section 1: Doña Faustina, a local widow in her middle-aged prime, purchases an inn—now derelict after a new highway route strands it from out-of-town traffic.
The community is divided: Dona Faustina is deemed either a penniless lunatic or a crafty eccentric hoarding a fortune.
Section 2: When a local child disappears, Doña Faustina is suspected of abduction, and the police are sent to search her residence.
Despite the proprietor's hostility, the authorities discover that the home's interior is in shambles, furniture shattered, and decaying food and refuse on the floor.
Locals report the older and younger sisters embarking on mysterious trips to far-flung cities and returning with bundles of goods.
Section 3: The servant José, while searching a "zapotes" on a remote and densely vegetated region on the property, discovers an earthen water tank built for cattle in the estate's heyday and hears a big splash he suspects is caused by some creature.
Afterward, Doña Faustina makes an offering to the man, encouraging him to ingest the contents of a small packet, "soft and slightly wet."
Section 6: Dona Faustina, concerned that the police may be summoned, departs the inn with her sister and infant son and flees to the provincial capital.
[10]Literary critic Anne Foltz observes that "'Doña Faustina' owes a good deal to Poe, but the thematic overtones and narrative presentation are purely Bowles.
[13][14][15] Literary critic John Ditsky writes: In this parable of one woman's ruthless and macabre quest for power through the Aztec device of eating the hearts of the enemy - in this case, innocent babies - the Faustian enterprise is frustrated when her son makes ironic use of his unknown birthright: power for him comes from renouncing control over others…"Doña Faustina" would seem, in the neatness with which it combines Indian, Christian and literary myths…a kind of digression for Paul Bowles, if not some sort of literary exercise in the grotesque.