Rabelais, a monk and physician, wrote these five books of grotesque comedy across three decades of the sixteenth century, inventing giants, monsters, wars over bread, and endless catalogues of everything from games to insults to ways to wipe one's posterior. The invention is inexhaustible; the scatology prodigious; the learning immense. It is the book that proved literature could include absolutely anything. Rabelais influenced everyone from Swift to Joyce to Pynchon. Reading it requires stamina and tolerance for chaos. The rewards are proportionate.