Tag Archives: Literary

On the Richness of Isaac Babel’s Odessa ‹ Literary Hub

On the Richness of Isaac Babel’s Odessa ‹ Literary Hub

This summer Pushkin Press has brought an essential selection from my two previous volumes of Isaac Babel’s stories. Of Sunshine and Bedbugs weaves together three strands that, at first blush, make for a motley braid. What do they have in common, these poignant reflections on a childhood marred by anti-Semitism, these gleefully garish evocations of a Jewish underworld that looms as large as Mount Olympus, these searing dispatches from the front lines of a war between Red Cossacks and revanchist Poles? One answer is a mastery of […]

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