A Fable is a story with a moral and the famous are Aesop's Fables.
Aesop was a Greek story teller. No writing by him exists and there is a question as to whether he really existed or not but there are a number of stories accredited to him. His stories include 'The Lion and the Mouse', 'The Goose that laid the Golden Egg' and 'The Boy who Cried Wolf'.
The Boy that cried wolf is the story of a shepherd boy who claims that there is a wolf attacking the sheep and the villagers rush to help but find there is no wolf. He does this again and then the third time when there really is a wolf no one believes him. The moral of the story is that you shouldn't lie because people won't believe you when you really need them.
Another well known story which includes a wolf is Peter and the Wolf. This is a composition written by Prokofiev and is assumed to be an allegory for the situation in Russia at the time. Russia and the soviet state was written about in secret by many of its great novelist including Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy and Solzhenitsyn.
Solzhenitsyn wrote many semiautobiographical books including Cancer Ward - about his time on a cancer ward - and A day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich .
A Day in the life document a day in the life of someone serving in the gulags in Siberia.
And so from the fables of ancient Greece and across eastern Europe to the wilds of Siberia.
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