The King of Warsaw is the Polish version of Goodfellas. The first of Szczepan Twardoch’s novels to be translated into English, it follows a young man as he enters the world of Warsaw gangsters. It’s clear why this plot-heavy tale of Poland in the 1930s was a bestseller in Europe: It’s packed with villainous hit men, street brawls with Nazis, whores with hearts of gold, and political coups. Though it is told in the looming shadow of World War II, the story focuses on Warsaw’s lowlifes. If The King of Warsaw sometimes feels a bit too familiar, it is still an entertaining pulp read for summer.

The novel’s protagonist is Jakub Szapiro, a prize-fighting boxer and lead enforcer for the Jewish mafia in Warsaw. Jakub’s tale is narrated by Mojzesz Bernsztajn, an Orthodox Jewish teenager. Mojzesz narrates the novel retrospectively, and the book cuts between the ‘30s and present-day Israel, where he is a retired general. This narrative frame brings a dream-like quality to the Warsaw portions. At the outset of the book, Jakub drags Mojzesz’s father out of his apartment and murders him for missing payments. After chopping the body up into pieces, Jakub becomes riddled by guilt and takes Mojzesz under his wing as an adopted son. Jakub carries out various missions for his gang, which is the criminal element of the Socialist Worker’s party, and Mojzesz catalogs a phenomenon that used to be rare in America: politics via gang warfare. As the political tensions rise and the gang violence escalates, Jakub begins to question whether he should leave Poland with the Zionists.