THE STREET OF CROCODILES AND OTHER STORIES

The Street of Crocodiles and Other Stories by Bruno Schulz: These interconnected stories (paired with Schulz's illustrations) follow a small boy and his family in 1930's Poland. My favorite stories concern his father, who engages in all sorts of increasingly delusional “projects” including keeping a menagerie of birds in the attic. His stories are often surreal, genuinely poetic, full of imagination and tenderness.

First Sentence:
“In July my father left to take the waters and left me with my mother and elder brother, a prey to the blinding white heat of the summer days.”