Author(s): Isaac Babel

Short Stories | Translated fiction | Russia | Ukraine

'Compact, irreverent, enigmatic, savage and tender... it is impossible to look at the world the same way after reading Babel... one of the enduring jewels of 20th-century Russian literature' - Financial Times

Isaac Babel honed one of the most distinctive styles in all Russian literature. Brashly conversational one moment, dreamily lyrical the next, his stories exult in the richness of everyday speech and sensual pleasure only to be shaken by brutal jolts of violence. These stories take us from the underworld of Babel's native Odessa, city of gangsters and lowlives, of drunken brawls and bleeding sunsets, to the terror and absurdity of life as a soldier in the Polish-Soviet War. Selected and translated by the prize-winning Boris Dralyuk, this collection captures the irreverence, passion and coarse beauty of Babel's singular voice.

'Fractured, jarring, beautiful, alive to humour... they have the ring of contemporaneity, and probably always will' - Guardian

Review: 
'Unforgettable stories, lyrical and earthy' - Irish Times
'Marvelously subtle, tragic, and often comic' - James Wood
'Elegiac, but not in the usual sense: Babel's is an ebullient elegy, filled with violence, sex, and life' - LA Review of Books

Contents: Table of Contents
Translator's Preface
Guy de Maupassant
(Part I) Childhood and Youth
The Story of My Dovecote
First Love
In the Basement
The Awakening
Di Grasso
(Part II) Gangsters and "Old Odessans"
The King
How It Was Done in Odessa
Lyubka the Cossack
Father
Justice in Quotes
The End of the Almshouse
(Part III) Red Cavalry
Crossing the Zbrucz
The Catholic Church in Novograd
A Letter
Pan Apolek
The Italian Sun
Gedali
My First Goose
The Rebbe
The Tachanka Doctrine
The Death of Dolgushov
The Life Story of Pavlichenko, Matvei Rodionych
Salt
The Rebbe's Son
Argamak

Author Biography: Isaac Babel was a short-story writer, playwright, literary translator and journalist. He joined the Red Army as a correspondent during the Russian civil war. The first major Russian-Jewish writer to write in Russian, he was hugely popular during his lifetime. He was murdered in Stalin's purges in 1940, at the age of 45.