These fourteen stories, published in 1920, bring together visionary narratives whose protagonists—the doctor who comes to a patient's bedside on a stormy night, the craftsman whose city has been invaded by a fearsome nomadic tribe, the imperial messenger who will never reach his destination—are children of an era in which life has been handed over to an impenetrable logic and understanding the world is inconceivable. If these stories continue to captivate us and exert, as Hannah Arendt noted, "a fascination so profound and lasting that suddenly any experience reveals its meaning," it is because a century later they still describe our times.