The Brazen Bull

Collection of varied short stories by Gerald Kersh. "The Brazen Bull", the story which lends its title to this collection, is a magnificently over-blown fantasia about celebrity hunting in Central Europe, and provides a complete contrast with the longest story in the collection, "Jack of Swords", which is an historical study of an attempted coup-d'etat aimed at installing a new head of the French army during Napoleon's absence in Russia. Finally, there is a group of very different and charming stories about Mr. Ypsilanti - the noble, chivalrous little gentleman whose "outmoded elegance" dates from the Imperial Court of Vienna, whose gallantry and goodness are such anachronisms in the squalid urbanity of his surroundings.