Modelled on the form of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, The Salzburg Tales contains a series of interlinked stories and fables. The narrators are gathered for the famous festival at Salzburg: the Festival Director, a Viennese conductor, a Scottish doctor, an archbishop and a dull English bore are among the characters who pass the time in telling fantastic and unusual tales. Christina Stead's intelligent writing is displayed at its best in this ambitious collection, which was first published in 1934.