Where does reality end and ‘bent reality’ begin? This collection of 55 eerie and bizarre stories set in various countries and in various times is the first book of fiction published by Robert Temple, who is well known for his unusual non-fiction books such as The Sirius Mystery and A New Science of Heaven.

One tale is told by a dog, in another an animal unexpectedly speaks, and in another a man discovers that he is dreamed by another man and that he himself has dreamed someone else. So which of them is real, what is real, are any of us?

Other odd going ons in The Tree’s Sadness include: Darwin meets his own brother, a young man inherits billions because he has an unusual grasp of mathematics, a man is arrested for researching an ancient Egyptian god, a popular magazine is shown to carry secret spy codes, a man turns to salt while his doctors take refuge in their favourite word “idiopathic," which means "we don’t know." A secret society worships the ancestors, oil portraits talk to one another, a man is troubled by mischievous water nymphs, and Conan Doyle’s Red-Headed League takes on a brand new incarnation.

The stories are told in a simple manner as if there were nothing at all unusual going on, but the events are far from normal.