The fiftieth anniversary of a lost classica deceptively sophisticated tale of sexual compulsion 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 final escapefrom his wife and his homeland and the last tendrils of his father’s religion. Set in Warsaw and the shtetls of the 1870sbut first published in 1960Isaac 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 as Rabbit, Run ; The Adventures of Augie March ; and The Moviegoer . As Milton Hindus wrote in The 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.”

艾薩剋·巴什維斯·辛格（Isaac Bashevis Singer，1904-1991），美國著名猶太裔作傢，先後創作長篇小說《莫斯卡特一傢》，《莊園》，《農莊》等。短片小說《羽毛的王冠》，《短片小說集》，《意象集》等。其中1978年《盧布林的魔術師》獲得當年諾貝爾文學奬。

辛格15歲開始文學創作，曾先後兩次獲美國全國圖書奬，多次獲得美國其他文學奬金。他一生共創作30餘部作品。辛格“因為他的充滿激情的敘事藝術，這種藝術既紮根於波蘭猶太人的文化傳統，又反映瞭人類的普遍處境”。

作品中的豐富成語和活潑語句受到評論界高度贊揚，認為那是任何譯文都無法傳達的。