Whimsical Tales

These 15 stories from the little-known Printemps, first published in 1885 and here appearing in English for the first time, are quaint satirical gems laced lightly with fantasy. “The Battle of the Dead” tackles the futility of war through its account of skeleton armies who continue to fight each other ages after the battle they first fought while living. “The Music Lover,” “Judge T.-P. Kroff,” and “The Dead Sergeant” all reveal the fanciful experiences of their characters to be the delusions of madmen. In “The Phantom Hunters,” one of the book’s more overtly macabre tales, a ghostly retinue brings a family curse from the past to its culmination in the present. Garrett applies a varnish of levity in his translations, but never so thickly that the serious subtexts of these stories do not show through. It’s a pleasing reminder of how much rewarding literature from the past may still lurk in sources obscure to modern readers. (Apr.)