Jurgen, A Comedy of Justice

Jurgen is a roguish poet who talks his way into Heaven, Hell, and everything in between, in this gleefully profane 1919 fantasy that dared to make the divine look ridiculous. When Jurgen's wife is abducted by a mysterious stranger, he embarks on a picaresque journey across a medieval cosmos, bargaining with the Devil, seducing the Virgin Mary (yes, really), and getting into increasingly absurd arguments about justice, truth, and the stories we tell ourselves. Cabell's prose is impossibly clever, his satire razor-sharp but never mean-spirited. He skewers Arthurian legend, religious piety, romantic idealism, and the entire concept of cosmic order with a wink and a grin. This is the book that invented modern fantasy satire, the secret ancestor of Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman. It is funny, philosophical, and unsettling in equal measure, and it got its author prosecuted for obscenity. For readers who believe the best fantasies are the ones that refuse to take themselves seriously.