Micromegas and Other Short Fictions

A comprehensive selection of Voltaire's very brief contes and melanges: tiny feats of narrative compression, each often no more than a few pages long. Their genre is something between a tale and a polemic - more gestures than stories. Something between a tale and a polemic, these "fables of reason" are feats of narrative compression and contain much of Voltaire''s best and funniest writing. From ribald tales of adultery to conversations between cosmic travellers, the stories in this collection pose moral, philosophical and social questions. Reader and protagonist alike find their assumptions challenged as Voltaire mingles rationality and fantasy.