The novel “Go and Sin No More” is what the author himself called a classic penny-dreadful novel—written emphatically in the style of a “penny-dreadful.” This melodramatic story, reminiscent in plot of L. Tolstoy’s “Resurrection,” is based on real events recorded in court protocols, witness testimony, the lawyer’s notes, and other archival documents. It leads the reader into old Odessa of the late 19th century, portraying with striking detail the setting, customs, everyday life, and speech of that distant era.
Olga Palem’s story, which began in Simferopol in a Jewish petty-bourgeois family, brought her to Odessa, where she became the heroine of a scandalously famous case known throughout Russia of that period—the murder of her lover—and ended on the shores of the Amur…