From the book's dust-jacket / slipcase text: "Considered one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century - and the most revered short-story writer since Chekhov - Isaac Babel (1894-1940) left a literary legacy that continues to grow, remarkably, more than sixty years after his death at the hands of Stalin's secret police. Despite Babel's celebrated stature - which had already been achieved during his lifetime - the whole of his work has never been assembled in English. "This magnificent edition of Babel's collected work fulfills a lifelong ambition of Babel's daughter, Nathalie, who has edited the entire collection and collaborated with the award-winning translator Peter Constantine. Included in "The Complete Works" are stories that will be familiar to Babel enthusiasts, such as the "Red Cavalry" cycle and his diaries, but also untranslated stories and other works that appear in English for the first time."
Authors
Isaak Emmanuilovich Babel (Russian: Исаак Эммануилович Бабель; 1894 - 1940) was a Russian language journalist, playwright, literary translator, and short story writer. He is best known as the author of Red Cavalry, Story of my Dovecote and Tales of Odessa, all of which are considered masterpieces of Russian literature. Babel has also been acclaimed as "the greatest prose writer of Russian Jewry." Loyal to, but not uncritical of, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Isaak Babel fell victim to Joseph Stalin's Great Purge due to his longterm affair with the wife of NKVD chief Nikolai Yezhov. Babel was arrested by the NKVD at Peredelkino on the night of May 15, 1939. After "confessing", under torture, to being a Trotskyist terrorist and foreign spy, Babel was shot on January 27, 1940. The arrest and execution of Isaak Babel has been labeled a catastrophe for the world of literature.
Recipient of the first Rea Award for the Short Story (in 1976; other winners Rea honorees include Lorrie Moore, John Updike, Alice Munro), an American Academy of Arts and Letters Mildred and Harold Strauss Living Award, and the PEN/Malamud award in 2008. Upon publication of her 1983 The Shawl, Edmund White wrote in the New York Times, "Miss Ozick strikes me as the best American writer to have emerged in recent years...Judaism has given to her what Catholicism gave to Flannery O'Connor."
