The Odessa Tales

The Odessa Tales is a collection of short stories by Isaac Babel, situated in Odessa in the last days of the Russian empire and the Russian Revolution. Published individually in magazines throughout 1923 and 1924 and collected into a book in 1931, they deal primarily with a group of Jewish thugs that live in the Moldavanka, a ghetto of Odessa. Their leader is Benya Krik, known as the King.