This memoir consists of actual incidents that Singer remembers from his childhood in Warsaw, where his father was a rabbi in a poor quarter of the city. Through their rooms at 10 Krochmalna Street (the father's rabbinical court) passed a variety of types who came to see the elder Singer for rulings on points of Jewish law and for personal advice and comfort. From his earliest boyhood days, the narrator heard things in his father's house that astonished, amused, perplexed and impressed him. These are things he never forgot and they are the fabric of this book. The author won the Nobel Prize for Literature.