Background
Isaak Babel was born on July 13, 1894 in Odessa. Son of a Jewish merchant.
(Language - English "A celebration of literary genius fram...)
Language - English "A celebration of literary genius framed by 20th-century tragedy."--Richard Bernstein, New York Times Finally in paperback, this "monumental collection; gathers all of Babel's deft and brutal writing, including a wide array of previously unavailable material, from never-before-translated stories to plays and film scripts" (David Ulin, Los Angeles Times). Reviewing the work in The New Republic, James Woods wrote that this groundbreaking volume "represents a triumph of translating, editing, and publishing. Beautiful to hold, scholarly and also popularly accessible, it is an enactment of love." Considered one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century, Isaac Babel has left his mark on a generation of readers and writers. This book will stand as Babel's final, most enduring legacy. Winner of the Koret Jewish Book Award; A New York Times Notable Book, a and Library Journal Best Book, a Washington Post Book World Rave, a Village Voice Favorite Book of the Year.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0393328244/?tag=2022091-20
("A book that will last, that you will reread all your lif...)
"A book that will last, that you will reread all your life and then pass on to your grandchildren. Or ask to be buried with."―Michael Dirda, Washington Post Following the historic publication of Norton's The Complete Works of Isaac Babel in the fall of 2001, The Collected Stories of Isaac Babel appears as the most authoritative and complete edition of his fiction ever published in paperback. Babel was best known for his mastery of the short story form―in which he ranks alongside Kafka and Hemingway―but his career was tragically cut short when he was murdered by Stalin's secret police. Edited by his daughter Nathalie Babel and translated by award-winner Peter Constantine, this paperback edition includes the stunning Red Cavalry Stories; The Odessa Tales, featuring the legendary gangster Benya Krik; and the tragic later stories, including "Guy de Maupassant." This will be the standard edition of Babel's stories for years to come. Maps
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0393324028/?tag=2022091-20
(Based on Babel's own diaries that he wrote during the Rus...)
Based on Babel's own diaries that he wrote during the Russo-Polish war of 1920, Red Cavalry is a lyrical, unflinching and often startlingly ironic depiction of the violence and horrors of war. A classic of modern fiction, the short stories are as powerful today as they were when they burst onto the Russian literary landscape nearly a century ago. The narrator, a Russian-Jewish intellectual, struggles with the tensions of his dual identity: fact blends with fiction; the coarse language of soldiers combines with an elevated literary style; cultures, religions and different social classes collide. Shocking, moving and innovative, Red Cavalry is one of the masterpieces of Russian literature. Pushkin Collection editions feature a spare, elegant series style and superior, durable components. The Collection is typeset in Monotype Baskerville, litho-printed on Munken Premium White Paper and notch-bound by the independently owned printer TJ International in Padstow. The covers, with French flaps, are printed on Colorplan Pristine White Paper. Both paper and cover board are acid-free and Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certified.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1782270930/?tag=2022091-20
(Edited, and with an introduction by Nathalie Babel. Trans...)
Edited, and with an introduction by Nathalie Babel. Translated from the Russian by Andrew R. MacAndrew.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B002TR2HD0/?tag=2022091-20
Isaak Babel was born on July 13, 1894 in Odessa. Son of a Jewish merchant.
Throughout his life, revolutionary ideals seem to have clashed with the moral values of his Jewish upbri nging. Born in the lively, cosmopolitan Black Sea port of Odessa, Isaac Babel received a traditional religious as well as a secular education.
After completing his studies in Kiev, he managed to acquire forged papers enabling him to evade anti-Semitic police regulations and move to Petrograd, where his earliest stories appeared in Maxim Gorky’s periodical Letopis.
Though modeled on the type of French conte written by Flaubert and Maupassant, they eventually displayed great individualism in their content and linguistic style.
Like many other Jewish intellectuals of his time, Babel welcomed the downfall of tsarism in 1917 and fought on the Bolshevik side during the Russian Civil War. As a political commissar attached to Semyon Budyonny’s First Cavalry Army, he may well have been the first Jew to ride with the dreaded Cossacks.
From 1923, Babel devoted himself to writing plays, scripts for films that have apparently vanished, and narrative works. His true genius was revealed, however, in the two collections of short stories that brought him worldwide renown and that Ilya Ehrenburg, a close friend, judged to be the chef d’ouevre of a “superlative craftsman.”
Drawing on his own experiences during the Polish campaign of 1920, Babel’s Red Cavalry tales made skillful use of Russian and Ukrainian dialect to create an authentic atmosphere and convey both the heroism and the horrors of full-scale war.
After 1929, Babel fell foul of the Soviet literary establishment and, while continuing to write, chose to publish very little.
The death of Maxim Gorky in 1936, as Stalin’s purge of veteran communists was gathering speed, robbed Babel of his most influential protector. Whatever the grounds for his arrest by the NKVD in 1939, he vanished completely and may well have been shot immediately, without the brief reprieve of a Siberian labor camp.
Babel’s name and best-known works were finally “rehabilitated,” however, in the 1950s, after Stalin’s death. Many unpublished tales have been lost; some printed earlier were reissued as Collected Stories (1955); others, rescued from oblivion by Isaac Babel’s daughter, appeared in her biographical volume, The Lonely Years, 1925-1939, published outside of the USSR in 1964.
(Based on Babel's own diaries that he wrote during the Rus...)
("A book that will last, that you will reread all your lif...)
(Language - English "A celebration of literary genius fram...)
(Edited, and with an introduction by Nathalie Babel. Trans...)
The left-wing Jewish idealists who figure in Babel’s stories are mainly reflections of himself — “a guy wearing specs” eager to be accepted by his comrades, but incapable of descending to their rough-and-ready level, the Bolshevik son of a rabbi who carries portraits of Lenin and Maimonides with him into battle. Thus, while helping to build a new world, he could not entirely shake off the old, attending synagogue on the Day of Atonement and observing the traditional Passover Seder.