In these tales, Karel Capek approaches great events and figures of history, myth, and literature in starling ways. Jesus’s loaves-and-fishes miracle is described from the point of a view of an otherwise sympathetic baker. Townspeople argue about who’s to blame for the approaching hordes of Attila the Hun. Abbots and smiths, servants and soldiers, judges and gods appear in these humorous, thought-provoking, and sometimes frightening tales. This book contains all new translations, as well as some stories that have not yet appeared in English.