The Complete Works of Isaac Babel (Magill’s Literary Annual 1991-2005)
At a glance:
- Author: Isaac Babel
- First Published: 2000
- Type of Work: Short fiction, diaries, and history
- Time of Work: 1913-1939
- Setting: The Soviet Union and Poland
- Principal Characters: The unnamed Jewish soldier-narrator, Benya Krik
- Genres: Short fiction, Diary, History
- Subjects: Courage, 1910’s, 1920’s, 1930’s, Jews or Jewish life, Cruelty, Funeral rites or ceremonies, Military life or service, Outlaws, Poland or Polish people, Soviet Union or Soviets, Russian Revolution
- Locales: Soviet Union, Poland
This is a literary event: The complete work of a brilliant, elusive Jewish-Russian writer of short fiction whose literary gifts compete for first place among Soviet prose writers of the twentieth century, and whose tragically abbreviated life was all too typical of artists under Stalin’s reign of horror. His daughter Nathalie (one of his three children) has, at the age of seventy-two, edited the fullest and presumably definitive edition of her father’s work, and engaged the excellent services of a distinguished translator, Peter Constantine, who previously did prize-winning...
[The entire page is 2078 words long]
