This copy signed by the author.

In these National Book Award-winning stories, Isaac Bashevis Singer writes of his early days in Poland, from 1908 to 1918, when life was hard but not always, to a boy of his imagination, a wonder. On Warsaw's Krochmalna Street, breezes from the Vistula and the Praga forest mingled with gutter smells and the aroma of fresh bagels. There scholars and urchins, peddlers and rabbis, thieves, even hobgoblins and imps, were at home, and young Isaac was curious about them all. Now lost forever, this was a world "rich in comedy and tragedy, rich in its individuality, wisdom, foolishness, wildness, and goodness."