The eight stories contained in this volume detail the contours of the lives and visions of a collection of Prague inhabitants, from a prostitute bound to the decay of the old Jewish quarter, to a man caught in the memory of a lost love and a shoemaker whose knowledge of the world has been constricted to the view from the window of his cellar workroom. These characters share an intense desire for lasting human contact and the disappointment of all such aspirations; binding them together is the city itself, whose nature gives rise to their desires while simultaneously determining their frustrations.