Max Barabander, distraught over the recent death of his son, flees the life ofwealth and respectabilty he has attained in Buenos Aires, to return to thepo verty and shadows of his youth spent in Warsaw. He fears animpotence which leads him to the pursuit of mindless sex with five different women who view him only as an escape from their drab lives. The author recalls the teeminglife of 1906 Jewish Warsaw in this impressive novel of changing mores and values. .