Red Cavalry (Pushkin Collection) - Softcover

Isaac Babel

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1782270930 ISBN 13: 9781782270935

Publisher: Pushkin Press, 2014

Synopsis

'Unforgettable stories, lyrical and earthy' Eileen Battersby, Irish Times (Books of the Year)

War's mess and muddle, the brutality and the inanity of fighting - few have better captured this than Isaac Babel, who was a journalist with the Soviet First Cavalry Army. His unflinching portrayal of the murderous havoc of battle is offset by an unexpected and wry humour: having seen the fighting up close, Babel is able to find the funny side of war while depicting its bloody side - in all its mesmerising and casual violence.

The lyricism and bitterness that characterise the thirty-give short stories of Red Cavalry are stunningly reproduced in this new translation by the award-winning Boris Dralyuk.

About this title

Review:

'Compact, irreverent, enigmatic, savage and tender... it is impossible to look at the world the same way after reading Babel... one of the enduring jewels of 20th-century Russian literature' -- Rebecca Abrams, Financial Times

'Unforgettable stories, lyrical and earthy' -- Eileen Battersby, Irish Times (Books of the Year)

'Vertiginous shifts in register... stylistic precision... Red Cavalry dazzles' -- TLS

'Following his equally magical renderings of Isaac Bable'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

'Think of M*A*S*H transported to the so-called Russian empire of 100 years ago... brilliant' -- RTE

'Some of the finest Russian fiction of the 20th century' -- Book World

'Marvelously subtle, tragic, and often comic' --The New Republic

'Amazing not only as literature but as biography... Aside from being a great writer, Babel stands as an emblem of the tragedy of 20th century totalitarianism... literary genius framed by 20th-century tragedy' -- New York Times

'Boris Dralyuk brings to vivid life Babel's wry, unflinching account of his time as a correspondent in the Red Army during Russia's civil war' -- Pen Atlas

'[A] classic collection... Casual violence alternates with beauty' -- Publishers Weekly

'Endlessly haunting... a masterpiece of negative space... I can't stop rereading it' -- Richard Price, author of Clockers

'The pure light of Babel's style shines through with this excellent translation by Boris Dralyuk - a prose rendered poetically, worthy of a Yeats or a Whitman or a Gogol' -- Review of Arts, Literature, Philosophy and the Humanities

'One of the great stylistic accomplishments of the 20th century... simply the best translation available' --Wall Street Journal

'Babel's narrative concision and his ability to shift registers, from the prosaic to the poetic and back, are riveting... in this crucible of war, Babel forged a new prose equal to the new energies and forms of life opened up by the revolution' -- Publishers Weekly

'Red Cavalry is an indictment of the banality of armed conflict through the voices of commissars and idealists, revolutionaries and soldiers alike. It should be required reading in every high school, in every nation where people still think wars are worth fighting' -- Russian Life Magazine

'Isaac Babel's Red Cavalry, now granted an afterlife in Boris Dralyuk's lyrical and fluid translation...' -- First Things

'Fine writing' -- East-West Review

'[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

From the Author:

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.

About this edition

• Publisher: Pushkin Press
• Publication date: 2014
• ISBN 10: 1782270930
• ISBN 13: 9781782270935
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 224