Chava Rosenfarb was one of the most important Yiddish writers of the second part of the 20th century. She was born in the industrial city of Lodz, Poland in 1923 and began writing at the age of eight with the encouragement of her father. A survivor of the Lodz Ghetto, of Auschwitz and Bergen Belsen, Rosenfarb settled in Canada in 1950, where most of the stories in this collection are set. Rosenfarb's novel, The Tree of Life: A Trilogy of Life in the Lodz Ghetto, was awarded the 1979 Manger Prize, Israel's highest award for Yiddish literature. She was the recipient of numerous other literary awards, including a Canadian Jewish Book Award and the John Glassco Prize for Literary Translation. In 2006, the University of Lethbridge awarded her an honorary degree, the only such honor ever accorded a Yiddish writer in Canada. To mark the centennial of her birth, the City of Lodz declared the year 2023 to be The Year of Chava Rosenfarb. Rosenfarb died in 2011.