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VIVID: LACERATING: UTTERLY HYPNOTIC: A literary event of extraordinary dimensions: the first single-volume edition of all of Isaac Babel's work." NEW First Edition (Orig. 2001) First Printing * 1.40 kg / 1.60 kg (w/ slipcase), 1076 pp * ABOUT THE BOOK: Among the greatest writers of the 20th century, & the most revered short story writer since Chekhov, Isaac Babel (1894-1940) left an extraordinary literary legacy that continues to grow more than 80 yrs. after his death in Lubyanka Prison at the hands of Stalin's secret police. Despite Babel's celebrated stature (already achieved during his lifetime) the whole of his work, owing to his arrest & the state of affairs in the Soviet Union, was never assembled in one place. This magnificent edition of Babel's collected work fulfills a lifelong ambition of Babel's daughter, Nathalie, who has authorized & edited the entire collection, & has collaborated w/ award-winning translator Peter Constantine in readying the work for publication. Every story or selection included in this volume (147 in total) has been newly edited & translated, beginning w/ Babel's first published story, "Old Shloyme" (orig. 1913) & concluding w/ 2 scenes from a screenplay that Babel did not live to see made into a film. Included in "The Complete Works" are stories that will be familiar to Babel enthusiasts, like the "Red Cavalry" cycle & his diaries, as well as untranslated stories & other works that appear in English for the first time. To read Babel is to relive the wild & often terrifying swings of 20th-century Russia. No writer has conveyed w/ such emotion & convulsive energy the tragic story of a modern nation that remained a prisoner of its brutal & repressive past. Combining the compassion of Dostoevsky w/ the mordant wit of Chekhov, Babel injected a daring social criticism & a palpable sexual tension into the literary climate of post-tsarist Russia. In the process, he created a style so vivid, so lacerating, & so utterly hypnotic that his stories have come to define the sanguinary landscape of the Soviet Union in the yrs. between the two world wars. As these stories illustrate, & as Cynthia Ozick insightfully observes in her passionate introduction, Babel was a man of acute contradictions. Born in the cosmopolitan port city of Odessa during the long reign of Alexander II, Babel was quite competent in both Hebrew & Yiddish but, influenced by both Flaubert & Maupassant, wrote his first stories in fluent French. His often comic portrayal of characters (such as the ruthless Jewish mobsters depicted in his Benya Krik stories) resulted from observing them firsthand as a boy in the Moldavanka neighborhood of Odessa. As Ozick notes, the "breadth & scope of his social compass enabled him to see through the eyes of peasants, soldiers, priests, rabbis, children, artists, actors, women of all classes. He was at once a poet of the city ('the glass sun of Petersburg') & a lyricist of the countryside ('the walls of sunset collapsing into the sky')." Arranged sequentially in 14 sections, The Complete Works traces the entire arc of Babel's literary career, beginning w/ early stories, which are followed by The Odessa Stories and The Red Cavalry Stories. Also included are his Reports from St. Petersburg (1918), the remarkable 1920 Diary, & reports from Soviet Georgia & France, where his wife, Evgenia, & his daughter, Nathalie, lived. Many of his later stories (1925-38) reflect a compelling literary quality & abrupt change in style that have challenged translators for years. An accomplished playwright & screenwriter, Babel, at the height of his popularity, began writing for the Soviet cinema as early as the 1920s, & many of these works have never been translated before. * SHIPPING: MNEMOSYNE carefully wraps, labels & custom-packages this SUPERB volume for FREE domestic shipment via USPS MEDIA MAIL or USPS PRIORITY MAIL for a below-cost additional fee & via USPS FIRST CLASS INTERNATIONAL MAIL at our posted rates.
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