“These exuberant stories, so startlingly fresh, so vigorous, and so wildly inventive, are a delight…”—Alastair Reid“Gombrowicz is one of the most original and gifted writers of the twentieth century: he belongs at the very summit, at the side of his kindred spirits, Kafka and Céline.”—Louis Begley“One of the greatest novelists of our century.”—Milan KunderaStunningly original in both style and content, these stories are hilarious yet have an undercurrent of profound moral disquiet and horror when the respectable turns slowly but inexorably into the outrageous, conveying both the horrors of upper-class life and the deepest anguish of the human condition.