The Story of My Dovecot (Masterplots II: Short Story Series, Revised Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: Isaac Babel
- First Published: 1925
- Type of Plot: Psychological
- Time of Work: 1905
- Setting: Nikolaev (near Odessa)
- Principal Characters: The narrator, Mother, Father, Shoyl Babel, Makarenko, Khariton Efrussi, Karavayev, Pyatnitsky
- Genres: Psychological fiction, Short fiction
- Subjects: Reality, Violence, Anti-Semitism, Death or dying, Hallucinations or illusions, Russia or Russian people
- Locales: Odessa, Ukraine
The Story
“The Story of My Dovecot” describes the effect of the notorious pogrom of October 20, 1905, on the Babel family and particularly on the author himself as a boy of eleven. It is one of Isaac Babel's most autobiographical stories. Nevertheless, the author changes a number of crucial details, including even his age, to yield greater drama. The story is thus clearly a work of fiction, yet the author rightly maintains the verisimilitude of autobiography for its powerful effect on the reader.
The situation of the boy, as the story opens, is precisely delineated:...
[The entire page is 1655 words long]
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