Produktdetaljer
Biografisk notat
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.The salty speech of the city's inhabitants is wonderfully rendered in a new translation by Boris Dralyuk... Hard-boiled language reminiscent of Dashiell Hammett
Vice
Elegiac, but not in the usual sense: Babel's is an ebullient elegy, filled with violence, sex, and life
LA Review of Books
Electric, heroically wrought prose
John Updike
[Isaac Babel's stories] opened a door in my mind, and behind that door I found the room where I wanted to spend the rest of my life
Paul Auster
Following his equally magical renderings of Isaac Babel's Red Cavalry and Odessa Stories in recent years, Mr Dralyuk has positioned himself as a master of the era's language, injecting welcome new life into an under-appreciated school of Russian literature
Economist
One of those "where have you been all my life?" books
- Nick Lezard, Guardian
This wonderful collection is a companion volume to Red Cavalry (2014). Babel is required reading
- Eileen Battersby, Irish Times Books of the Year 2016
Odessa Stories is witty, surprising and full of amusing food references. Of course, Babel was not a 'food writer' but he wrote staggeringly well about food - the emotions that surround it, the headiness of it, the swindling of it
- Caroline Eden, The Island Review
Sparkling, wily and loose-tongued... Babel's dialogue calls for a daring translator... Boris Dralyuk delivers brilliantly
TLS
I like the first-person narrator of Isaac Babel's classic story about class, "In the Basement," who, at the end of the story, completely humiliated, tries to drown himself in a rain barrel, but is saved by his grandfather, who tells him: "Grandson, I go now to take castor oil, so I'll have something to lay on your grave." A really upbeat family story
- George Saunders, New York Times
Like a fusion of David Sedaris' gentle, self-effacing comedy an Ernest Hemingway's staccato encounters with twentieth century brutality
Soviet Roulette
A gripping, poignant collection of stories about his home city from one of the leading lights of European modernism
The New European
His is still an original, sparky voice sounding out of the great Russian literary pantheon
RTE Arena
This is a wonderful, highly readable collection of stories
The London Magazine
Lively and entertaining, wonderfully written and gives a captivating yet poignant glimpse of a lost world. Plus it's a beautifully produced Pushkin edition - so what more could you want?
Kaggsy's Bookish Ramblings (blog)
Fine writing
East West Review