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