Yosef Haim Bren­ner wrote most­ly in Hebrew and often based his fic­tion on his own expe­ri­ences and the mis­eries endured by Jews in Rus­sia at the begin­ning of the 20th cen­tu­ry, such as the ter­ri­ble ordeal of a Jew draft­ed — as he was — into the Czar’s army, and the poi­so­nous anti-Semi­tism that was a fact of army life. He paints a stark pic­ture of what it was like to be incar­cer­at­ed in Russ­ian jails, and he vivid­ly describes the ter­ror expe­ri­enced by those who tried to escape across the bor­der, know­ing that one false move could mean death. Bren­ner moved to Pales­tine in 1910 after liv­ing for three years in London’s East End (the set­ting of the final sto­ry in the col­lec­tion) and was trag­i­cal­ly mur­dered by Arab riot­ers in 1921. His anguished prose and haunt­ing por­tray­al of an extra­or­di­nary cast of char­ac­ters is a unique con­tri­bu­tion to Hebrew lit­er­a­ture of the ear­ly 20th cen­tu­ry. Biog­ra­phy, intros to the stories.