World Famous Comics: Red Cavalry and Other Stories (Penguin Classics)
Red Cavalry and Other Stories (Penguin Classics)
By: Isaac Babel Publisher: Penguin Classics Average Rating: Binding: Paperback Label: Penguin Classics Number of Items: 1 Number of Pages: 400 Publication Date: January 31, 2006
Product Description: From the early Soviet period, the impassioned short fiction of the great Russian-Jewish writer
One of the most powerful short-story writers of the twentieth century, Isaac Babel expressed his sense of inner conflict through disturbing tales that explored the contradictions of Russian society. Whether reflecting on anti-Semitism in stories such as “Story of My Dovecote” and “First Love,” or depicting Jewish gangsters in his native Odessa, Babel’s eye for the comical laid bare the ironies of history. His masterpiece, “Red Cavalry,” set in the Soviet-Polish war, is one of the classics of modern fiction. By turns flamboyant and restrained, this collection of Babel’s best-known stories vividly expresses the horrors of his age.
“Amazing not only as literature but as biography.” —Richard Bernstein, The New York Times “Marvelously subtle, tragic, and often comic.” —James Wood, The New Republic
Excellent book This book is not to be read at one sitting, but many of these stories are powerful, well written and cause you to think. In today's world of politically correct stories with boring characters, this is a welcome change.
Amazing Russian Modernist Writer This is a wonderful collection of Isaac Babel's stories. His writing is terse, image laden and thoroughly engaging. Recounting his experiences with Cossack cavalry in Poland, Babel's tales offer a unique and firsthand perspective into these Russian campaigns. Babel's style and his short stories (many times as short as half a page) ask to be read with a level of engagement that many are incapable of. Luckily the stories are both easy and enjoyable to re-read and offer much to be considered and mulled over - though his stories are in prose they demand the attention and interaction of poetry. Babel is a unique and interesting writer, and his stories are by no means light reading. Presenting moral questions of persecution, violence and conflicting identities (ethnic, religious, political - to name a few) Babel is a Russian writer to be savored. One note on this Penguin edition: the notes are lacking compared to most Penguin Classics publications and the translation begs for these notes to have been better compiled and expanded. Many words are left untranslated and many times translations are made in an attempt to maintain a Polish or Russian sound - which though wonderful for those that have the knowledge or time to appreciate it is for anyone else an unnecessary distraction from Babel's writing.
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