The painter Marc Chagall died in 1985 while a major exhibition of his work, mounted jointly by the Royal Academy of Arts in London and the Philadelphia Museum of Art, was drawing massive crowds. A notable feature of that exhibition was the spotlight on quotations taken from this autobiography. The book, which first appeared in English translation in 1965, recounts Chagall's early life and throws light on the shaping of his creative genius. Chagall describes his childhood in the provincial Russian town of Witebsk, his early struggle as an artist in the face of poverty and opposition and his fruitful years in Paris after 1910 - the city where he found fulfilment and recognition. After recalling these experiences, Chagall relates his return to Russia on the outbreak of World War I and the despair that finally induced him to go back to France with his wife and young daughter in 1922.