Red Cavalry and Other Stories (Paperback)

Paperback. One of the great masterpieces of Russian literatureThroughout his life Isaac Babel was torn by opposing forces, by the desire both to remain faithful to his Jewish roots and yet to be free of them. This duality of vision infuses his work with a powerful energy from the earliest tales including 'Old Shloyme' and 'Childhood', which affirm his Russian-Jewish childhood, to the relatively non-Jewish world of his collection of stories entitled 'Red Cavalry'. Babel's masterpiece, 'Red Cavalry' is the most dramatic expression of his dualism and in his simultaneous acceptance and rejection of his heritage heralds the great American-Jewish writers from Henry Roth to Saul Bellow and Philip Roth. 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 aStory of My Dovecotea and aFirst Love, a or depicting Jewish gangsters in his native Odessa, Babelas eye for the comical laid bare the ironies of history. His masterpiece, aRed Cavalry, a set in the Soviet-Polish war, is one of the classics of modern fiction. By turns flamboyant and restrained, this collection of Babelas best-known stories vividly expresses the horrors of his age. aAmazing not only as literature but as biography.a aRichard Bernstein, "The New York Times" aMarvelously subtle, tragic, and often comic.a aJames Wood, "The New Republic" Shipping may be from our Sydney, NSW warehouse or from our UK or US warehouse, depending on stock availability. …