Isaac Babel. Biography

This book is the first complete scholarly biography of Isaac Babel (1894-1940), one of the best writers of the 20th century, recognized as a classic of Russian and world literature. Tracing the twists and turns of Babel's complex and tragic fate is not easy, and the reason for this is not only the absence of the majority of his personal archive, which was confiscated during his arrest in 1939 and has still not been found. Many legends and unreliable rumors circulated around Babel's name, whose books were banned for two decades and were later published very rarely during the Soviet era. Babel himself was often prone to mystifications. The authors of this book, literary scholars E. I. Pogorelskaya and S. H. Levin, aimed to show Babel — the writer and the man — in the context of the most complex historical era, of which he was both a witness and a participant, to recreate the process of working on his works, to trace how his ideas were born and realized, and to reveal his relationships with contemporaries. The writing of the book utilized archival documents, the works of the writer, memories about him, as well as his letters, including unpublished ones. The book is richly illustrated and includes an annotated index of names.