..... Mr. Mundstock, a little man in a dusty coat carting rubbish.... a ""target woven of straw with a six pointed star in the middle""..... living alone in a room with his bird and the reminders-rebukes of his shadow, Mon.... visiting the Sterns once a year, two years, he can hardly remember until they are sent off to the concentration camp.... suddenly sensing that he is to be a messiah, a seer, although ""the future was compact of horror"".... ready to die, or almost, and except for his faith which is synonymous with suffering, defenseless..... In translation from the Czech, another deadend street to The Shop on Main Street; a short novel which reduces this experience to the disassociation which takes place within a man's mind where memories, fantasies, fears all splinter. However questionable the audience, it is unarguably affecting.