Great

Like any collection of short stories, some of these are better than others, but the best are wonderful. My personal favorites include "Sabres on the Sand"," about an Englishman who fights a wild duel in interwar Romania, and "The Picket Lines of Marton Hevessy" about a Hungarian who marries a Jew in pre-World War II Hungary, and converts to Judaism; when the Communists take over Hungary, he finds a way to get himself restored to the rank of baron; when he moves to the US in the McCarthy era, he refuses to say whether or not he is a Communist (though he obviously is not), "Twilight of a God" is about a Roman Temple to Mithras which has become a sit of home-made sausage-making. and ""Eggs as Ain't" is about a woman who foils the British postwar food regulations by breeding chickens to produce "irregular" eggs that don't come under the rules. A more serious but beautiful story is "Champion Antiochus" about a French planter in Syria who plans to sacrifice a beautiful bull to Artemis, but at the last moment changes his mind, and suffers a terrible vengeance from the frustrated goddess. ( )