A superb introduction to the caustic wit and keen observations of one of the world's greatest storytellers. Included are "Tevye the Dairyman", his masterpiece and the basis for Fiddler on the Roof, and all 21 Railroad Stories, in which human nature and the various shocks of modernity are p...

A superb introduction to the caustic wit and keen observations of one of the world's greatest storytellers. Included are "Tevye the Dairyman", his masterpiece and the basis for Fiddler on the Roof, and all 21 Railroad Stories, in which human nature and the various shocks of modernity are perceived by men and women riding the trains from shtetl to shtetl.

Of all the characters in modern Jewish fiction, the most beloved is Tevye, the compassionate, irrepressible, Bible-quoting dairyman from Anatevka, who has been immortalized in the writings of Sholem Aleichem and in acclaimed and award-winning theatrical and film adaptations.

And no Yiddish writer was more beloved than Tevye's creator, Sholem Rabinovich (1859-1916), the "Jewish Mark Twain," who wrote under the pen name of Sholem Aleichem. Beautifully translated by Hillel Halkin, here is Sholem Aleichem's heartwarming and poignant account of Tevye and his daughters, together with the "Railroad Stories," twenty-one tales that examine human nature and modernity as they are perceived by men and women riding the trains from shtetl to shtetl.