Penguin Island

This masterwork of satire is a must-read for anyone who has ever rolled their eyes at the soft-focus, heavily romanticized histories of Europe's origins that were popular in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In Anatole France's hilarious account, a half-blind missionary lands on a remote island and immediately sets about converting all the natives (which are actually penguins) to Christianity. Centuries' worth of historical hijinks ensue.