The Centaurs

The Centaurs

André Lichtenberger

André Lichtenberger

The Centaurs (1904) chronicles the last days of the Era of the Beasts that preceded ours, when Fauns, Tritons and other now-mythical creatures shared the Earth. In that wild world, the balance of nature is maintained by the Centaurs. The One Law is Thou Shalt Not Kill. But one day, Klevorak, the King of the Centaurs, learns that the One Law has been broken by the new creatures called Men, whom he calls The Accursed Ones. Meanwhile, the beautiful Katilda, one of the few remaining female Centaurs, refuses to bear offspring with the males of her species and instead falls in love with a young hunter, who only sees in her a coveted prey. Soon, the Elder Races are slaughtered by Men. Can Klevorak still save the remnants of his people by taking them across the ocean to the legendary Sacred Isle? This beautiful, timeless classic of French fantasy, inbued with violence and melancholy, is translated here for the first time, with three other stories; literary homages to Jonathan Swift, Rudyard Kipling and H.G. Wells.
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The Children of the Crab

The Children of the Crab

André Lichtenberger

André Lichtenberger

In the midst of World War I, German and French explorers discover a vast, mysterious Pacific island where they encounter a race of "missing links" that time forgot. But they also bring to that peaceful utopia the ravages of the bloodiest war ever fought. The Children of the Crab (1921) shares some common themes with Edgar Rice Burroughs' classic The Land That Time Forgot (1918). It depicts a lost Polynesian island culture, halfway between nature and civilization, made up of intelligent anthropoids in an intermediate state between humans and apes. This philosophical fantasy is no less timely now than it was in 1921, especially as humanity deals with the ecological holocaust, the continuation and intensification of which the story predicted.
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