Members of a fabled Hasidic sect, rounded up to be sent to a concentration camp, avoid their fate by posing as acrobats on a circus train; an aging wigmaker pursues a young delivery man in New York City so that she can make herself a wig from his glorious curly hair; a wealthy Park Avenue WASP undergoes a sudden conversion to Orthodox Judaism while riding in a taxi; a young writer in Stalinist Russia is mistakenly put to death at the moment of his first creative success. These and other extraordinarily inventive stories invite comparison with those of Franz Kafka and Bernard Malamud.