The streets of East London - hard by the City - are, even today, another world. Not so long ago, the old Spitalfields market flourished, tramps made bonfires of crates and runaways subsisted in tiny garrets, above rooms rented by the hour to prostitutes, above warehouses whirring day and night with sewing machines. And underneath it all was the splendour of 18th-century London - broad staircases, mahogany doors, exquisite plasterwork.

Litvinoff (above) knew the area well in the early 20th century. He was born in Whitechapel in 1915 to Russian Jewish immigrants, and made a career as a poet, novelist and activist - most notably as the editor of Jews in Eastern Europe, which campaigned against anti-Semitism in the Soviet Union.

The idea for this book came to him in the early 1970s when he revisited Bethnal Green. Everything had changed: “Clumps of Muslim men stood aimlessly on corners ... the odour of spices mixed with the stench of drains ... instead of the old Yiddish newspapers ... there were others printed in Urdu”. And yet, when he found the tenement where he grew up, there were his own initials carved into the windowsill on a long ago day.

His stories partly draw on his own experience: “I drifted into Communism when I was about 11 under the influence of a militant boy named Mickey Lerner ...with a chronic cough. His father, a presser, also coughed because his lungs had been rotted by the steaming cloth”. Otherwise, they come from the memories of his family and his friends.

Part fiction they may be, but they are always true to their territory. “The East End of the time,” he writes, “was honeycombed with darkness.” East End streets are still haunted by persistent ghosts.

Journey Through a Small Planet by Emanuel Litvinoff
Penguin, £9.99 Buy the book

There will be a free Emanuel Litvinoff event at the East London Central Synagogue, on September 7 at 3pm. Reservations: 07941 367882 or clivebettington@lineone.net

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