Through four sensuous tales, a young man traces his harsh coming of age in Czechoslovakia, where faith in love, country and human kindness must hold out against increasing political disillusionment. His first affections move from a young kitchen girl in the Jewish ghetto who fills his glass tall with scarce milk to a restless married woman, an undercover spy, and a frail woman who can't escape her past suffering. It is Ivan Kl ma's keen, ironic eye and naive, lyrical timbre that suffuses these stories with their richness of detail. Kl ma's work was banned in his native Czechoslovakia, where he was published in samizdat.