Böcker av Isaac Babel

Throughout his life Isaac Babel was torn by opposing forces, by the desire both to remain faithful to his Jewish roots and yet to be free of them. This duality of vision infuses his work with a powerful energy from the earliest tales including 'Old Shloyme' and 'Childhood', which affirm his Russian-Jewish childhood, to the relatively non-Jewish world of his collection of stories entitled 'Red Cavalry'. Babel's masterpiece, 'Red Cavalry' is the most dramatic expression of his dualism and in his simultaneous acceptance and rejection of his heritage heralds the great American-Jewish writers from Henry Roth to Saul Bellow and Philip Roth.

Isaac Emmanuilovich Babel (13 July [O.S. 1 July] 1894 - 27 January 1940) was a Russian writer, journalist, playwright, and literary translator. He is best known as the author of Red Cavalry and Odessa Stories, and has been acclaimed as "the greatest prose writer of Russian Jewry." Babel was arrested by the NKVD on 15 May 1939 on fabricated charges of terrorism and espionage, and executed on 27 January 1940.Red CavalryIn 1920, Babel was assigned to Komandarm (Army Commander) Semyon Budyonny's 1st Cavalry Army, witnessing a military campaign of the Polish-Soviet War of 1920. He documented the horrors of the war he witnessed in the 1920 Diary (Конармейский Дневник 1920 года, Konarmeyskiy Dnevnik 1920 Goda), which he later used to write Red Cavalry (Конармия, Konarmiya), a collection of short stories such as "Crossing the River Zbrucz" and "My First Goose". The horrific violence of Red Cavalry seemed to harshly contrast the gentle nature of Babel himself.Babel wrote: "Only by 1923 I have learned how to express my thoughts in a clear and not very lengthy way. Then I returned to writing." Several stories that were later included in Red Cavalry were published in Vladimir Mayakovsky's LEF ("ЛЕФ") magazine in 1924. Babel's honest description of the brutal realities of war, far from revolutionary propaganda, earned him some powerful enemies. According to recent research, Marshal Budyonny was infuriated by Babel's unvarnished descriptions of marauding Red Cossacks and demanded Babel's execution without success. However, Gorky's influence not only protected Babel but also helped to guarantee publication. In 1929 Red Cavalry was translated into English by J. Harland and later was translated into a number of other languages.Argentine author and essayist Jorge Luis Borges once wrote of Red Cavalry, The music of its style contrasts with the almost ineffable brutality of certain scenes. One of the stories-"Salt"-enjoys a glory seemingly reserved for poems and rarely attained by prose: many people know it by heart. (wikipedia.org)

Isaac Emmanuilovich Babel (13 July [O.S. 1 July] 1894 - 27 January 1940) was a Russian writer, journalist, playwright, and literary translator. He is best known as the author of Red Cavalry and Odessa Stories, and has been acclaimed as "the greatest prose writer of Russian Jewry." Babel was arrested by the NKVD on 15 May 1939 on fabricated charges of terrorism and espionage, and executed on 27 January 1940.Red CavalryIn 1920, Babel was assigned to Komandarm (Army Commander) Semyon Budyonny's 1st Cavalry Army, witnessing a military campaign of the Polish-Soviet War of 1920. He documented the horrors of the war he witnessed in the 1920 Diary (¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿¿ 1920 ¿¿¿¿, Konarmeyskiy Dnevnik 1920 Goda), which he later used to write Red Cavalry (¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿, Konarmiya), a collection of short stories such as "Crossing the River Zbrucz" and "My First Goose". The horrific violence of Red Cavalry seemed to harshly contrast the gentle nature of Babel himself.Babel wrote: "Only by 1923 I have learned how to express my thoughts in a clear and not very lengthy way. Then I returned to writing." Several stories that were later included in Red Cavalry were published in Vladimir Mayakovsky's LEF ("¿¿¿") magazine in 1924. Babel's honest description of the brutal realities of war, far from revolutionary propaganda, earned him some powerful enemies. According to recent research, Marshal Budyonny was infuriated by Babel's unvarnished descriptions of marauding Red Cossacks and demanded Babel's execution without success. However, Gorky's influence not only protected Babel but also helped to guarantee publication. In 1929 Red Cavalry was translated into English by J. Harland and later was translated into a number of other languages.Argentine author and essayist Jorge Luis Borges once wrote of Red Cavalry,The music of its style contrasts with the almost ineffable brutality of certain scenes. One of the stories-"Salt"-enjoys a glory seemingly reserved for poems and rarely attained by prose: many people know it by heart. (wikipedia.org)

The follow-up to our highly acclaimed edition of Red Cavalry, again translated by the award-winning Boris DralyukOdessa was a uniquely Jewish city, and the stories of Isaac Babel - a Jewish man, writing in Russian, born in Odessa - uncover its tough underbelly. Gangsters, prostitutes, beggars, smugglers: no one escapes the pungent, sinewy force of Babel's pen.From the tales of the magnetic cruelty of Benya Krik - infamous mob boss, and one of the great anti-heroes of Russian literature - to the devastating semi-autobiographical account of a young Jewish boy caught up in a pogrom, this collection of stories is considered one of the great masterpieces of twentieth-century Russian literature.Translated with precision and sensitivity by Boris Dralyuk, whose rendering of the rich Odessan argot is pitch-perfect, Odessa Stories is the first ever stand-alone collection of all the stories Babel set in the city - and includes tales from the original collection as well as later ones.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.

This diary by Russian writer Isaac Babel recounts his experiences with the Cossack cavalry during the Polish-Soviet war of 1919-20. The basis for "Red Cavalry", Babel's best-known work, it records the devastation of the war and the extreme cruelty of the Polish and Red Armies towards the Jews.