Pavel Lembersky

Patient A	Fiction novel. Manuscript 2024. 544 pages

Odesa, as we know, is currently under attack (almost daily), like so many Ukrainian cities. Apart from the city being constantly in the news, the relevance of these „Texts from Odesa“ is in its paying tribute to the city rich in world-recognized literary tradition: chatty, irreverent, humorous, exuberant, ironic, whimsical. God knows, the irrepressible Odesans need that vibe in these dark times more than ever. But so does the world at large. Also, the book strives not to so much as to perpetuate the eternal ‘Odesa myth’ but rather to extend and enrich it, employing the new optics the author inevitably picked up during close to half a century of his living in the USA. Because you can take the boy out of Odesa but you cannot take Odesa out of the boy.