Originally published in 1898, From a Faraway Land, here translated into English for the first time by Brian Stableford, is one of the quintessential collections of Symbolist short fiction, by Remy de Gourmont, one of France’s greatest writers.

With their sophisticated understatement, and hybridization of the narrative techniques and strategies developed by the suppliers of newspaper fiction with those of Baudelairean prose poetry, these stories employ symbolism in its most extreme form, that of allegory, and are unquestionably among the author’s most refined accomplishments.