Burning Lights - by Bella Chagall (Paperback)

About the Book

This is a charming portrait of childhood in the Russian market town where the great painter and his wife grew up. Bella's warm, humorous stories of her pious Jewish family are illustrated by 36 of her husband's pen-and-ink line drawings.

Book Synopsis

This charming memoir by Bella Chagall recalls her childhood in Vitebsk, the Russian-Jewish market town where she and her husband, Marc Chagall, grew up. Her warm reminiscences of Jewish family life in pre-Revolutionary Russia are illustrated with thirty-six pen-and-ink drawings by Marc Chagall.

Bella Chagall, a gifted author and actress, was the youngest of seven children born to a well-to-do Hasidic family. While living in France in the 1930s, the Chagalls conceived the idea of commemorating their native town with a book. The title they chose was Burning Lights, an allusion to the festive candles that in their childhood had lit up the holidays of the Jewish year.

Review Quotes

"A happy collaboration between painter Marc Chagall and his wife Bella. . . . Chagall's illustrations capture that special quality of fantasy blended with truth."
--Saturday Review

"In simple prose, Mrs. Chagall brings us into close contact with the Russian-Jewish community of the last generation--a life that is now physically in ruins but spiritually alive."
--San Francisco Chronicle

"Pure pleasure to read . . . evocative, wistful. There is none who will not love this little book."
--New York Herald Tribune

About the Author

BELLA ROSENFELD CHAGALL (November 1985 - September 1944) was a Jewish Belarusian writer and the first wife of painter Marc Chagall. Chagall's works include The Burning Lights and First Encounter.