About the book: 2014 / A.I. Kuprin (1870–1938) is one of the most famous prose writers of the 20th century, a realist, and a master of psychological analysis. The book includes works in which events take place in the Crimea. “The small but desperately brave steam boat “Hero”, which runs daily between Yalta and Alupka, puffing like a eager dog, and fluttering, as if in a hurricane, in the lightest swell, I tried to establish a passenger connection with Balaklava. But nothing good came of this attempt, repeated three or four times: only a waste of coal and time. On each voyage, the Hero arrived empty and returned empty. And the Balaklava Greeks, distant descendants of the bloodthirsty Homeric Listrigons, met and saw him off, standing on the pier with their hands in their pants pockets, with well-aimed words, ambiguous advice and caustic wishes…»