About the book: year / Nathan Englander's prose masterfully combines brilliant phantasmagoria and virtuosic everyday life writing. Stories unfold before us, as if on a theatrical stage, full of drama and unique humor. In the story “Reb Kringle,” an elderly rabbi with a luxurious beard is forced to work as Santa Claus for Christmas. In The Acrobats, Polish Jews from Chelm escape certain death in a concentration camp by transforming themselves into acrobats. In the hilariously funny story “For the Sake of Pacifying Passions,” a Hasid, tired of his wife’s coldness, receives permission from the rabbi to visit a prostitute. And in all of Nathan Englander’s stories, life’s drama turns into a human tragicomedy.