In the streets and alleys of the old town of Vilnius, Joseph Buloff grew up learning the art of metamorphosis, necessary for survival during the successive occupations of Cossacks, Germans, Bolsheviks and Poles. Urban life, the thunder, the reality of the First World War ... Everything is combined in this stunning historical document of a period during which Eastern Europe and the Western world changed forever.

In the tradition of the literature of the absurd, Yosik, the narrator, tells the chaotic story of his spiritual home, the old market in Vilnius, and learning extravagant smaller than normal Jewish boy, but glib and vivid imagination. Heartbreakingly funny and historically reliable, the book has all the overflowing vitality of that life in the marketplace.