“The considerable talents of author Joseph Skibell and narrator Allen Lewis Rickman join to deliver a captivating Holocaust story that is as magical and joyous as it is tragic and heartrending. . . . an utterly engrossing story that, like Chaim’s odyssey, cannot be abandoned.”
      —AudioFile (Earphones Award)

“Allen Lewis Rickman brilliantly narrates Skibell’s debut novel, a macabre tale first published in 1997 to rave reviews and newly available on audio. His tone of determined cheerfulness creates the mood of a Yiddish folktale.”
      —Library Journal (starred review and a Wyatt’s World “Best Bets” selection)

“Brilliant ... Astonishing.”
      —The Boston Globe

“Startlingly original. . . .  Recalls the dark, hallucinatory world of Jerzy Kosinski’s The Painted Bird while at the same time surpassing it.”
      —The Washington Post

“As mesmerizing as a folk tale, as rich as gold itself.”
      —The Denver Post

“A compelling tour de force, a surreal but thoroughly accessible page-turner.”
      —Houston Chronicle

“As magical as it is macabre.”
      —The New Yorker

JOSEPH SKIBELL has received a Halls Fiction Fellowship, a Michener Fellowship, and a National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowship, among other awards. He teaches at Emory University and is the director of the Richard Ellmann Lectures in Modern Literature.