Odessa Stories

By (author) Babel Isaac; Translated by Dralyuk Boris
Short description/annotation:
A collection of short stories by Isaac Babel, situated in Odessa in the last days of the Russian empire and the Russian Revolution.
Description:
Odessa was a uniquely Jewish city, and the stories of Isaac Babel - a Jewish man, writing in Russian, born in Odessa - uncover its tough underbelly. Gangsters, prostitutes, beggars, smugglers: no one escapes the pungent, sinewy force of Babel''s pen. From the tales of the magnetic cruelty of Benya Krik - infamous mob boss, and one of the great anti-heroes of Russian literature - to the devastating semi-autobiographical account of a young Jewish boy caught up in a pogrom, this collection of stories is considered one of the great masterpieces of twentieth-century Russian literature. Translated with precision and sensitivity by Boris Dralyuk, whose rendering of the rich Odessan argot is pitch-perfect, Odessa Stories is the first ever stand-alone collection of all the stories Babel set in the city - and includes tales from the original collection as well as later ones.
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The salty speech of the city''s inhabitants is wonderfully rendered in a new translation by Boris Dralyuk... Hard-boiled language reminiscent of Dashiell Hammett
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Elegiac, but not in the usual sense: Babel''s is an ebullient elegy, filled with violence, sex, and life
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Electric, heroically wrought prose
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[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
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Following his equally magical renderings of Isaac Babel''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
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One of those "where have you been all my life?" books
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This wonderful collection is a companion volume to Red Cavalry (2014). Babel is required reading
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Odessa Stories is witty, surprising and full of amusing food references. Of course, Babel was not a ''food writer'' but he wrote staggeringly well about food - the emotions that surround it, the headiness of it, the swindling of it
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Sparkling, wily and loose-tongued... Babel''s dialogue calls for a daring translator... Boris Dralyuk delivers brilliantly
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I like the first-person narrator of Isaac Babel''s classic story about class, "In the Basement," who, at the end of the story, completely humiliated, tries to drown himself in a rain barrel, but is saved by his grandfather, who tells him: "Grandson, I go now to take castor oil, so I''ll have something to lay on your grave." A really upbeat family story
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Like a fusion of David Sedaris'' gentle, self-effacing comedy an Ernest Hemingway''s staccato encounters with twentieth century brutality
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A gripping, poignant collection of stories about his home city from one of the leading lights of European modernism
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His is still an original, sparky voice sounding out of the great Russian literary pantheon
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This is a wonderful, highly readable collection of stories
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Lively and entertaining, wonderfully written and gives a captivating yet poignant glimpse of a lost world. Plus it''s a beautifully produced Pushkin edition - so what more could you want?
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Fine writing
Biographical note:
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