«The Island of Penguins». Once, a frisky saint mistakenly baptized the penguins living on a secluded island. There was no choice but to convert them into humans, lest the holy sacrament be tainted. Thus begins the witty novel «The Island of Penguins», in which the author's contemporaries saw a biting parody of the history of France — from the Merovingians and the Middle Ages to the Dreyfus Affair, «consumer society», mass culture, terrorism, and even the First World War!.. The heavens are restless. A group of conspiratorial angels is determined to overthrow God and replace him with the more appealing Lucifer. Joining the revolutionaries is Arkady — a guardian angel who has read seditious literature and absorbed distinctly anarchistic beliefs from the books. Fighting the «ruling regime» is expected to be done quite un «heavenly» methods... Two brilliant satirical novels by Anatole France — very different yet equally ironic and phantasmagorical.
