Yama: The Hell-hole
With an insight and compassion reminiscent of the great French masters of literature, Alexander Kuprin probes the sin-ridden lives of the inmates of Yama. The result is a daring, world-famous classic which runs the gamut of human emotions from the heart-wrenching sacrifice of an afflicted prostitute to the wanton desires of the most degraded man.This book will shock you into an awareness of a great social evil. It will also arouse your deepest sympathy for the plight of those unfortunate women who are the victims of our most eternal vice!"Yama, The Hell-Hole" is unique. Other writers have taken prostitutes for their characters. Kuprin has taken the evil of prostitution itself. Although he writes of a brothel in a Russian city, his moral is not limited to a time and a place. Change rubles to dollars, move from Yama to the Chicago slums--Kuprin's ever-honest, ever-brilliant picture of the ancient business of selling women's bodies for profit still holds its universal meaning.When the book was first published, the Russian censorship mutilated it beyond recognition. Kuprin was the object of a scurrilous attack in the press; he was called a corrupter of youth. His book was denounced as pornography. Few could face the bitter truth of what he had written. Some touching letters from professional prostitutes were the author's first recognition that he had accurately described the hell in which these tormented women existed. Today nearly three million copies have been sold in more than fifteen different languages, and it is a foregone conclusion that "Yama" will live forever among the world's great books.