The stories in this collection tackle great events and figures of history, myth, and literature in unexpected ways, questioning views on such basic concepts as justice, progress, wisdom, belief, and patriotism.

    of what Ladislav Klíma wrote and stood for.—Bohumil HrabalKlima's intense inner life and complex mental state are reflected in his peculiar writings. The eccentricity of style and occasional violence found in his prose were intended to convey the deep conflicts attending his thought processes, and this is perhaps best exemplified in the novella Glorious Nemesis, a balladic ghost story that explores the metaphysics of love and death, crime and reincarnation. Sider, a man of twenty-eight, is confronted in the Tyrol by a giant mountain named Stag's Head and an ancient hovel standing under a high, black cliff. Out one day on a hike, he encounters two women who will mark his fate: the elder Errata, dressed in red, and the younger Orea, dressed in blue (the two colors of the Virgin Mary). From this point on Sider is on a quest for the All, the Absolute, and to achieve eternity by atoning for the misdeeds of a past life. Willing to risk his entire fortune and sanity, he succumbs to his dreams and hallucinations as Orea, or her doppelgänger, becomes for him the apotheosis of the Feminine, a representation of the goddess Nemesis who initiates him into the mysteries of life and death through her attribute of divine retribution. Published posthumously in 1932, this is the first English translation.