This 2nd volume of fables from Kalila and Dimna, picks up where the 1st, Fables of Friendship and Betrayal, leaves off – covering deceit, political skullduggery, murder, enemies, deadly monsters, kings, bees, princesses, monkeys, lions, crocodiles and how we all live and die together in joy or conflict.

This is a book full of outrageously behaved animals and humans doing the most delightfully awful (yet sometimes gentle) things to each other. Here are more joyous, sad, amusing and sometimes brutal stories; their function being to educate both king and commoner alike in the ways of the world — the harsh realities that can often lurk beneath the surface of our cozy, everyday subjectivity.