Benya Krik The Moldavanka
The King
In the crowded courtyards and carters' yards of the Moldavanka, Benya Krik, the King, rules the Jewish underworld with a swagger, a code and an unerring sense of theatre. Babel makes the slum quarter a place of gorgeous, murderous comedy, its raids and weddings staged like opera.
The Benya Krik stories
explicit The stories' underworld is the Moldavanka, the real poor Jewish quarter of Odessa, the turf of the gangster king Benya Krik and his men.
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Benya Krik Deribasovskaya (the raids)
The King
Down in the elegant centre, along Deribasovskaya and its shops and offices, Benya Krik stages his robberies with a flair that makes even his victims admire him. The gap between the grand avenues and the slum yards is the charged space across which the King's gorgeous outlawry moves.
The Benya Krik stories
explicit The bourgeois centre of Odessa along Deribasovskaya, the real main street, is the wealthy city the gangsters raid; it grounds the contrast between the Moldavanka and the money it preys on.
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