'In Acland Street, St Kilda, there is a small blue plaque beside the entrance to a clothing store, where once there stood a cafe called Scheherazade. I walk past it almost every day, this minor curiosity on an ever-changing thoroughfare. The plaque is easy to miss, and few people stop to read its inscription. But for those of us who remember the Babel-like din inside and schnitzels the size of a plate, that name – Scheherazade – and the names Avram and Masha Zeleznikow draw us back to a tiny pocket of old Europe – lost Europe – stitched into a seaside suburb in Melbourne at the farthest corner of the earth.' (Introduction)
