The fiftieth anniversary of a lost classic--a deceptively sophisticated tale of sexualcompulsion and one man's flight from love Yasha Mazur is a Houdini-like performer whose skill has made him famous throughout eastern Poland. Half Jewish, half Gentile, a freethinker who slips easily between worlds, Yasha has an observant Jewish wife, a Gentile assistant who travels with him, and a mistress in every town. For Yasha is an escape artist not only onstage but in life, a man who lives under the spell of his own hypnotic effect on women. Now, though, his exploits are catching up with him, and he is tempted to make one finalescape--from his wife and his homeland and the last tendrils of his father's religion. Set in Warsaw and the shtetls of the 1870s--but first published in 1960--Isaac Bashevis Singer's second novel hides a haunting psychological portrait inside a beguiling parable. At its heart, this is a book about the burden of sexual freedom. As such, it belongs on a small shelf with such mid-century classics asRabbit, Run;The Adventures of Augie March; andThe Moviegoer. As Milton Hindus wrote inThe New York Times Book Review, "The pathos of the ending may move the reader to tears, but they are not sentimental tears . . . [Singer] is a writer of far greater than ordinary powers."