"Yama," will question that the great, the gigantic Kuprin has
shown "the burdens and abominations" of prostitution, in "simple,
fine, and deathlessly-caustic images"; has shown that "all the
horror is in just this--that there is no horror..." For it is as a
pitiless reflection of a "singular," sinister reality that "Yama"
stands unsurpassed.

B. G. GUERNEY.

New York City, January, 1922.





TRANSLATOR'S NOTE.


A word must be said of Kuprin's style. He is by no means a purist;
his pages bristle with neologisms and foreign--or, rather,
outlandish--words; nor has he any hesitancy in adapting and
Russianizing such words. He coins words; he is, at times, actually
Borrowesque, and not only does he resort to colloquialisms and
slang, but to dialect, cant, and even actual argot. Therein is his
glory--and, perhaps, his weakness. Therefore, an attempt has been
made, wherever corruptions, slang, and so forth, appear in the
original, to render them through the nearest English equivalents.
While this has its obvious dubieties and disadvantages, any other
course would have smacked of prettification--a fate which such a
book as "Yama" surely does not deserve.