San Antonio College Library

Yasha Mazur, a conventional husband who entertains his cronies on secret trips to the underworld of Warsaw by performing feats of magic finally crosses the thin line that separates playboy from criminal. Yasha uses his skills to crack the safe of the wealthy Kazimierz Zuriski and from then on he becomes an outcast and a hunted man.

It's 1922 and David Bendiger, an aspiring eighteen-and-a-half-year-old writer, arrives in Warsaw, penniless and homeless. His only contacts are Sonya, a young woman with whom he has had amorous dealings in the village they have left, and a Zionist functionary who informs him he has qualified for a certificate permitting him to emigrate to Palestine. But in order to make the journey David must enter into a fictitious marriage with a woman so eager...