The eight short stories in this collection, by Marcel Ayme, Alain Robbe-Grillet, Raymond Queneau and other French writers, have been selected for their literary merit and as representative of twentieth-century French writing. The English translations that are printed in a parallel text are literal rather than literary, and there are additional notes on the text. This volume is intended primarily to help English-speaking students of French, but the stories also stand on their own and make excellent reading in either language.