Fables, the second volume to be published of Theroux’s short stories, truly among his richest and thought-provoking, is a compilation of among his most imaginative, daring, whimsical, highly inspired, and characteristically unconventional work. It will be followed by the third and last of the triad, Later Stories.

This collection, which includes pieces long and short, including two ballads, has been much anticipated by his faithful readers. In these narratives, Theroux has mastered in the originality of sheer invention the folklorish, even fairy-tale quality, of the moral fable, touching in his chronicles on the tried-and-true plots of romance, mythology, mystery, puzzles, secrets, and questions of intrigue without making any of the pieces didactic or overly doctrinal. We encounter in this gathering an assemblage of little sagas, epics, and apologues an intrepid explorer deep in the Amazon jungle seeking a black orchid for Queen Victoria. A disturbed German violin student undergoes in the course of his lessons a strange and unpredictable response to a rare, priceless instrument. A love story in old China finds two sweethearts in the dire peril of a venomous court intrigue. The ancient linen wrapping of Egyptian mummies leads to a weird conspiracy that takes place, unpredictably, in the state of Maine. The neuroses of a mother-hating son have ghastly consequences in his own marriage. Nothing can match for weird enchantment the wizard-architect named Vinegarfly.

At the turn of every page a surprise awaits in these unforgettable stories, where, in his own right proving a wizard himself of the language, Theroux handles words like Faberge his eggs, for, in a final analysis, language once again is his subject. As David Bowman observed in the New York Times, Alexander Theroux … is one of America’s premier frotteurs, to use a French term the impeccable James Salter applies to someone who ‘rubs words in his hand.