Winner of the Leacock Medal for Humor, this memoir captures life in a small northern town of Torgov's youth in the heady era of the 20th C from the Depression to WWII. Here Jewish merchants, English lawyers, Scots bankers, Ukrainian domestics and a few Chinese struggle to make a living in a remote outpost. And it is here that a young man, yearning for a larger life, turns his comic gaze.