Odessa Stories

<p><strong>A collection of "electric, heroically wrought" Russian short stories of violence, crime, and sex set in Ukraine&mdash;for fans of hard-boiled fiction by Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett (John Updike)</strong><br /> <br />Odessa was a uniquely Jewish city, and the stories of Isaac Babel&mdash;a Jewish man, writing in Russian and born in Odessa&mdash;uncover its tough underbelly around the time of the Russian Revolution. Gangsters, prostitutes, beggars, smugglers: no one escapes the pungent, sinewy force of Babel's pen.<br /><br /> From the tales of the magnetic cruelty of Benya Krik&mdash;infamous mob boss, and one of the great anti-heroes of Russian literature&mdash;to the devastating semi-autobiographical account of a young Jewish boy caught up in a pogrom, this collection of stories is considered one of the great masterpieces of twentieth-century Russian literature.<br /><br /> Translated with precision and sensitivity by Boris Dralyuk, whose rendering of the rich Odessan argot is pitch-perfect, <em>Odessa Stories</em> is the first ever stand-alone collection of Babel's narratives set in the city and includes the original stories as well as later tales.</p>