Odesa Takes Center Stage in Fiction Abroad

Odesa has confirmed its status as the Ukrainian city that inspires the greatest number of novels and thrillers in foreign literature, particularly in English and Italian. The city provides an ideal setting for both espionage stories, thanks to memories of the Cold War, and crime fiction, given its long-established reputation as the capital of the Ukrainian mafia – although it would be more accurate to describe it as a city where several criminal gangs operate. Even when a plot has nothing to do with crime or espionage, simply including the name Odesa in the title can make a book more appealing. One example is Frederick Forsyth’s bestselling The Odessa File, which has no connection whatsoever with the Ukrainian city.JOIN US ON TELEGRAMFollow our coverage of the war on the @Kyivpost_official. Here are the most recent titles published outside Ukraine. Frederick Forsyth and Tony Kent This is the sequel to the famous 1972 bestselling thriller The Odessa File. Once again, “Odessa” is an acronym for a clandestine neo-Nazi organization and does not refer to the city. Fifty years after uncovering the secrets of Odessa – the underground organization of former Nazis that sought to regain power – the now elderly and retired journalist Peter Miller suspects that someone on his long list of enemies may be behind the deaths of his son and daughter-in-law in a tragic car accident. By 2025, Odessa has been replaced by Medusa, which has attained a degree of covert power greater than anything Odessa ever possessed. The rise of the far right in German politics, the surge in violence and terrorism against Germany’s immigrant population, and the angry response of its citizens are all symptoms of a hidden danger, deliberately created by someone who must be stopped at all costs. Odessa’s heirs are playing for the ultimate prize: control of the White House. Other Topics of Interest Russia Strikes Ukraine-Moldova Border Crossing for Second Night in a Row Russian drones targeted the Odesa region overnight, hitting the international Tabaki crossing on the Moldova border, according to Ukrainian border officials. I girasoli di Odessa (The Sunflowers of Odesa) Leonardo Gori This is the latest Italian novel in the series featuring Carabinieri Captain Bruno Arcieri, set in Italy during the Fascist period and extending into the post-war years. It is a spy story set in Odesa after the Second World War, during the Cold War. In the spring of 1948, Colonel Bruno Arcieri, an officer in the Italian intelligence services, is assigned a particularly dangerous mission. He must be parachuted beyond the Iron Curtain, near a city in Eastern Europe, to track down an undercover agent possessing important information about the Soviet Union. In 1948, the city that Mussolini called “Stalingrad by the sea” becomes a Cold War battleground. The war has been over for three years, Odesa is a Soviet city and Stalin is in power. The city is an important Black Sea trading hub for the transport of grain and for Jewish emigration to Israel – the State of Israel was established that very year. Furthermore, the Black Sea marks the frontier between NATO and the USSR, while Odesa serves as a naval base for the Soviet fleet. The setting bears similarities to the present day: the figures in power have changed, with Putin replacing Stalin, but the locations featured in the novel recall those of the war in Ukraine. The story is rich in evocative settings, from Istanbul at sunset to the yellow hues of sunflowers in the Ukrainian countryside – an image that calls to mind Van Gogh’s famous Sunflowers paintings and the popular 1970 film Sunflower, starring Sophia Loren and Marcello Mastroianni. Undefeatable: Odesa in Love & War Julian Evans An elegant love letter to the Ukrainian port by an author who lived in the city and traces its transformation from an exotic haunt of criminal gangs into a symbol of freedom, now under attack amid the violence of Russia’s war. Julian Evans explores Odesa’s rich heritage, its multi-ethnic soul and its new Ukrainian identity. He transports us in imagination to the shores of the Black Sea and to Odesa, one of Eastern Europe’s most beautiful cities – a place of multiple identities that refuses to be confined to any single definition. It is Italian, French, Jewish, Greek, Moldovan, German, Ukrainian, Crimean Tatar and much more besides. Both the Russian and Soviet empires attempted to flatten this diversity into a single imperial identity. They failed. Today, in an act of retaliation, Russia is attempting to destroy Odesa, launching missiles and drones at its historic center, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Yet Odesa is also searching for a new identity. This remains a work in progress and is not yet entirely complete, making the city extraordinarily vibrant and, in many respects, still misunderstood by foreigners and Ukrainians alike. Odessa Gabrielle Sher Gabrielle Sher’s book is a historical horror novel following a Jewish family living in a shtetl in Odesa, the port city that was then part of the Russian Empire and is now in Ukraine. It is an original blend of Jewish folk tales and folk horror, featuring numerous references to the Kabbalah, golems and dybbuks, all set against a historical background. In an imagined Russia during the era of the pogroms, a grief-stricken family turns to ancient magic to bring their bright and spirited teenage daughter, Yetta, back to life. Fear has engulfed their shtetl. Jewish people are mysteriously disappearing, and everyone is expecting an imminent attack. When violence descends upon them, Yetta is killed. Overcome with grief, her father Mordechai draws upon his still-limited knowledge of ancient texts and ancestral magic to restore her to life. Miraculously, Yetta returns – but although she looks the same, she is no longer the girl she once was. She senses that her family is hiding a horrible secret from her. It is a story of familial love set against a climate of looming violence and systemic oppression. …dal mare – Nero di Odessa (…From the Sea – The Black Sea of Odesa) Marco Cardetta Odesa, Ukraine: a city belonging to everyone and no one; mother of geniuses, poets, refugees, convicts, revolutionaries, exiles, prostitutes, mystics and musicians. A city built, destroyed and rebuilt over the centuries by Italians, Greeks, French, Germans, Jews, Tatars, Circassians, Georgians, Poles, Romanians, Moldovans, Albanians, Armenians, Azerbaijanis, Bulgarians, Russians, Ukrainians and Roma. Italian writer Marco Cardetta’s book is a poem in 22 cantos that, through the voices of numerous original characters, form a fully fledged novel in verse. It creates a visionary portrait of the encounter between the self and the world, between the West and its forgotten margins, and between memory and oblivion. Odesa is not a city to be described: it is a place of the mind. The author’s language is a deliberate and highly original blend of archaisms, Russianisms, Ukrainianisms, Yiddish and Ancient Greek – a polyphony reflecting the very nature of Odesa. The style moves between ballad, fable and dramatic monologue. Conceived and written before 2022, the work has nothing to do with the Russo-Ukrainian War. It is a portrait by someone who had already imagined Odesa as a universal archetype, long before the world turned it into a symbol of war. Crescent City Crackdown: Beauregard’s Revenge Michael P. Kleiman A detective story that leads to Odesa. Jean Paul “JP” Beauregard, a detective with the New Orleans Police Department, sees his world collapse when his wife, Yvette, is brutally murdered during a war between criminal gangs. When the conventional justice system becomes mired in bureaucracy, JP decides to retire and search on his own for the man who ordered his wife’s murder: Alexey Krutikov, the kingpin of Brooklyn’s ruthless Bandera crime syndicate. JP crosses the Atlantic to infiltrate Odesa’s underworld in the midst of the war in Ukraine. Posing as an independent operative, he enters a shadowy world of deep-rooted corruption, maritime terminals after dark and dangerous criminal groups. It is a gripping account of one man’s relentless quest for revenge, unfolding from the sweltering, jazz-filled streets of New Orleans’ French Quarter to the mysterious streets of Odesa.