In 1855 the French caricaturist Honoré Daumier and six other artists proposed to illustrate anew the fables of revered French poet and fabulist Jean de la Fontaine (1621-95), and what a book it would have been! Their project was never realized — until now. Prompted by Daumier's intention, artist Koren Christofides has brought together more than sixty artists from across the United States, Europe, and Asia to create original artwork for . These illustrations — by painters, printmakers, photographers, ceramists, sculptors, conceptual artists, fiber artists, and art historians — celebrate an extraordinary intersection of contemporary art with the fabulist tradition. Constantine Christofides and Christopher Carsten have translated sixty-five of La Fontaine's fables. Readers will not only find familiar tales, such as "The Hare and the Tortoise," that have delighted generations of children and adults, but also a trove of lesser-known satiric fables, such as "The Man Between Two Ages and His Two Mistresses," translated here with sophisticated gusto and an elegance worthy of La Fontaine's enduring genius. A cogent introduction by Constantine Christofides describes the volatile social context of seventeenth-century France as well as the literary tradition, stemming from Aesop, that underlies La Fontaine's fables. Koren Christofides, the project's initiator and director, gives a curator's account in her preface of the present-day artists' exhibition from which the book's illustrations were chosen.