These stories serve as an introduction to Nicholas Hagger's five volumes
totalling 1,001 stories (an echo of The Thousand and One Nights, or
Arabian Nights). They are grouped in two parts which reflect the two
aspects of the fundamental theme of world literature outlined in his A
New Philosophy of Literature: 'Follies and Vices' and 'Quest for the
One'. These stories condemn follies and vices in relation to an implied
virtue - more than 150 vices are listed in a Preface - and present
moments of heightened consciousness in which the universe is perceived
as a unity.