Book details
A True Story
Inspect the stored metadata, editorial profile, authors, categories, and local EPUB state.
Stored record
Metadata
- Gutenberg ID
- —
- Title
- A True Story
- Language
- en
- Book source
- Global Grey
- Description max 80 words
-
Lucian of Samosata's satirical masterpiece parodies ancient travel tales and mythology. Through a narrator's fantastical voyage, the story features lunar journeys, monstrous creatures, and a visit to the underworld, ultimately revealing the absurdity of credulity while celebrating the joy of imaginative storytelling.
- Summary up to 500 words
-
In his enduring 2nd-century satire, *A True Story*, Lucian of Samosata sets out to expose the falsehoods of earlier authors like Homer and Ctesias. However, rather than debunking them, Lucian embraces the spirit of invention, launching a narrator and his companions on an impossible journey that serves as both a critique of gullible audiences and a celebration of fiction's creative power. The narrative begins with the travelers sailing up a river of wine, which flows from infinite vine trees at its source. They then fly through the air between the Pleiades and Hyades, encountering cities of light and the Nephelocentaurs, before swallowing a giant whale. Inside the beast, they discover a vast, habitable world containing cities, forests, and diverse human-like races. The travelers engage in battles with local inhabitants, explore the belly's geography, and eventually escape to visit the Islands of the Blessed. There, they encounter Ulysses and Calypso, who reveal that Ulysses was killed by his son Telegonus. The journey continues through a forest of floating trees, across a bridge of water, and past islands inhabited by women who feed on men. Throughout the tale, Lucian seamlessly blends classical allusion with absurd invention, using a simple, classic style to make the impossible seem plausible. His work demonstrates that the greatest liar is often the one who lies most delightfully, proving that literature can find material in the debased and various life of every day, replacing tradition with observation more vivid than the note-book of the naturalist.
- LLM editorial rating
- 4.2/5
- Download URL
- https://www.globalgreyebooks.com/ebooks2/lucian_true-story.epub
- Local file path
-
data/epubs/url-2835dacf861dbf82.epub - Downloaded at
- 2026-06-30 19:38 UTC
People
Authors
- Lucian
- Lucian of Samosata
Classification
Categories
No categories stored.