Odessa Stories

A collection of "electric, heroically wrought" Russian short stories of violence, crime, and sex set in Ukraine-for fans of hard-boiled fiction by Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett (John Updike) Odessa was a uniquely Jewish city, and the stories of Isaac Babel-a Jewish man, writing in Russian and born in Odessa-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.   From the tales of the magnetic cruelty of Benya Krik-infamous mob boss, and one of the great anti-heroes of Russian literature-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. Translated with precision and sensitivity by Boris Dralyuk, whose rendering of the rich Odessan argot is pitch-perfect, Odessa Stories 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. "The salty speech of the city's inhabitants is wonderfully rendered in a new translation by Boris Dralyuk . . . Hard-boiled language reminiscent of Dashiell Hammett." -Vice