The author was a German-born Jew who died in the first year of the Great War. He wrote short stories that were immediate and compelling in their style. In this book the first story is about a strange man called Max Meschenmal. He had grown up in an impoverished family who took little interest in him, and who was permanently angry because he was very small. One day he meets another man called Kuno Kohn, who is equally as strange as him, and from that point his life changes.