"These tiny stories, in which a wide variety of animals show us how human we really are, are completely uproarious." — Saturday Review of Literature
"These fables are as cogent and necessary today as they were before and after the Great War when Thurber's plainspoken, satiric fables provided a way to speak out in an era of political suspiciousness, false hopes, and mistrust. These fables are, indeed, for our time." —Michael J. Rosen, from the Introduction
James Thurber has been called "one of the world's greatest humorists" by Alistair Cooke ( The Atlantic), and "one of our great American institutions" (Stanley Walker)—and few works reveal Thurber's genius as powerfully as his fables. Perennially entertaining and astutely satirical, Thurber pinpricks the idiosyncrasies of life with verbal frivolity, hilarious insights, political shrewdness, and, of course, quirky, quotable morals.
Now, readers can savor 85 fables by the twentieth century's preeminent humorist collected for the first time in a single anthology. Here, Fables for Our Time, Further Fables for Our Time, and ten previously uncollected fables—illustrated by such renowned artists as Seymour Chwast, Mark Ulriksen, Laurie Rosenwald, and R. O. Blechman—are presented in Collected Fables, a must-have for readers of all ages.
Industry Reviews
“There is almost nothing of Thurber that doesn’t sing to me as clearly as if he were standing next to me asking why I have a tattoo from “The Moth And The Star.” But he was at his best when he set himself extraordinarily tight word limits, and these fables are the result: economical, surgical, and unforgettable.”
