The Outrage

This audiobook is narrated by a digital voice.

The Outrage — A True Story” by Aleksandr I. Kuprin is a darkly comic and socially charged story set around the aftermath of anti-Jewish pogroms in Odessa. Rather than focusing on respectable officials or victims alone, Kuprin frames the tale around a group of thieves who appear before Jewish lawyers and community representatives to protest that the pogromists have committed an “outrage” against the criminal underworld itself: looting, violence, and public disorder have been carried out without the thieves’ code, skill, or standards. Through this absurd defense, the story satirizes law, criminality, mob violence, and moral hypocrisy, using comedy to sharpen its condemnation of social brutality.