A Fable is a novel set in the battlefield of World War I. After four years of the most destructive war in the history of humanity, many of the enlisted men are exhausted, injured, or dead. The officers, conversely, are constantly assuring themselves that they are on the precipice of victory. With no end in sight, the corporal and his small band of disciples convince 3,000 men to stop fighting. This moment of peace is the subject of the novel and the event that sets the plot in motion. The peace emerges during a chaotic war but ends quietly within a week. This brief moratorium of fighting, however, inexorably alters the characters. The short-lived vision of an alternative world is too dangerous an idea to bear, both for the enlisted men and the officers. The tension between war and peace emerges as a key theme, as the transition from one to the other and back again inspires the soldiers to reflect on the nature of their lives. Many lose their faith in their country, their cause, and themselves as a result of the contrast between war and peace. After four years of total war, peace is intolerable, and the intolerability and unsustainability of the brief peace is a commentary on the brutality of World War I.