Yama (The Pit) - Alexander Kuprin
Written between 1909 and 1915 in three parts by the enfant terrible of Russian literature, Alexander Kuprin's Yama is an extraordinarily frank and in-depth look at the nature of prostitution that must certainly have been revolutionary for its time as it is no less powerful and relevant today. The novel recounts the lives of the prostitutes of a run-down outlying district of a large southern Russian town of Odessa, the district known as Yamaskaya, or, more commonly, Yama - The Pit. Inevitably, the depiction of the impoverished circumstances of the lifestyle of the girls at Anna Markovna's house of ill repute – a lower quality 2-rouble establishment on Little Yamaskaya (the more upmarket brothels operating in Greater Yamaskaya) – is grim, sordid and degrading, but the novel looks realistically at the outlook maintained by the women and the lives that they have escaped from that permits them to endure the hardships of their profession. Some of the clients are indeed foul and the ...