Odessa Stories
By Isaac Babel
4/5
()
Currently unavailable
Currently unavailable
About this ebook
The follow-up to our highly acclaimed edition of Red Cavalry, again translated by the award-winning Boris Dralyuk
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.
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 major Russian-Jewish writer to write in Russian, he was hugely popular during his lifetime. He was murdered in Stalin's purges in 1940, at the age of 45.Isaac Babel
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 major Russian-Jewish writer to write in Russian, he was hugely popular during his lifetime. He was murdered in Stalin's purges in 1940, at the age of 45.
Related to Odessa Stories
Related ebooks
Selected Poems, 1968-1996 Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The House of the Dead Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The God of Vengeance Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Yiddish Tales Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsTaras Bulba and Other Tales Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsLike a Bride and Like a Mother Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBosnian Chronicle: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Beautiful Twentysomethings Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The House of the Dead or Prison Life in Siberia with an introduction by Julius Bramont Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Coronado's Children: Tales of Lost Mines and Buried Treasures of the Southwest Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Taras Bulba & Other Tales: 'Whatever you may say, the body depends on the soul'' Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Five: A Novel of Jewish Life in Turn-of-the-Century Odessa Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Autobiographical Works of Fyodor Dostoyevsky: Memoirs, Letters, Autobiographical Novels, Diary and Biography Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsIsaac B. Singer: A Life Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5House of the Dead Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsKenneth Slessor Selected Poems Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Eugene Onegin: Must Read Classics Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAnatomy of a Genocide: The Life and Death of a Town Called Buczacz Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Dostoyevsky, The Man Behind: Memoirs, Letters & Autobiographical Works: Correspondence, Diary & Autobiographical Novels Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings7 best short stories by Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsPrison Life in Siberia Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Precipice Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsEugene Onegin: A Romance of Russian Life in Verse Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsRussian Rambles Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Heavens Are Empty Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsEssays on Russian Novelists Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA. Sutzkever: Selected Poetry and Prose Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Under Western Eyes (Barnes & Noble Library of Essential Reading) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Autobiographical Works of Fyodor Dostoyevsky Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Short Stories For You
The Stories of Ray Bradbury Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Finn Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Little Birds: Erotica Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Jackal, Jackal: Tales of the Dark and Fantastic Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Ocean at the End of the Lane: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Nineteen Claws and a Black Bird: Stories Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Things They Carried Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5A Good Man Is Hard To Find And Other Stories Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Ficciones Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Skeleton Crew Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5100 Years of the Best American Short Stories Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas: A Story Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Lovecraft Country: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5So Late in the Day: Stories of Women and Men Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Four Past Midnight Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Five Tuesdays in Winter Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Bradbury Stories: 100 of His Most Celebrated Tales Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Sex and Erotic: Hard, hot and sexy Short-Stories for Adults Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Unfinished Tales Of Numenor And Middle-Earth Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Explicit Content: Red Hot Stories of Hardcore Erotica Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Philip K. Dick's Electric Dreams Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Selected Short Stories Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Tales of Mystery and Imagination Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Hellbound Heart: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Reviews for Odessa Stories
9 ratings2 reviews
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5This Pushkin Press edition brings together all of Isaac Babel’s stories with an Odessa setting, in a new translation by Boris Dralyuk. Dralyuk also provides a helpful introduction which explains the context of the stories and gives insights into his approach to the translation. We learn, for instance, that at the start of the 20th century Odessa had the largest Jewish settlement after New York and Warsaw, counting around 140,000 Jews. The community had also its seamier underworld, largely based in the area of Moldavanka. This part of the city, which Dralyuk compares to London’s Whitechapel or New York’s Lower East Side, led to the development of what one might call Odessa’s “urban folklore”, peopled by gangsters at once reviled for their violence and revered for their roguish charm and peculiar code of honour.The first part of this volume of stories is entitled “Gangsters and other Old Odessans” and includes tales inspired by this “urban folklore”. They feature recurring characters – such as Benya “the King” Krik, Froim “the Rook” and Lyubka “the Cossack”. I must confess that I did not find these criminals particularly likeable, nor did I warm to their dubious exploits. Whatever my feelings about his protagonists, however, there’s no denying Isaac Babel’s brilliance as a writer. His style is very particular, alternating dark humour with lyrical passages inspired, according to Dralyuk, by the argot of Odessa. It must have been a particular challenge to capture the flow of the originals in this English translation, but Dralyuk manages to do so effectively by drawing, believe it or not, on the style of American pulp fiction contemporary with Babel's stories. The gangster tales are complemented by a number of autobiographical works, grouped under the title “Childhood and Youth”. These vignettes reflect Babel’s Odessan upbringing, but they are an imaginative interpretation of his childhood impressions, rather than a memoir. You could call it autobiographical fiction, or fictional autobiography. Three pieces which could not be comfortably placed under either of these two sections are placed in a final part - "Loose Leaves and Apocrypha." This is a collection to read, both for the quality of its stories and for the snapshot it gives of the Jewish community of Odessa at a particular point in time. Here was a world which would soon change forever.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I have great respect for Pushkin Press, who publish interesting authors in such a beautiful format. The short stories in the beginning of this collection which focus on gangsters and various other characters in Odessa were hit and miss with me, but it got more interesting and more poignant towards the middle, with more direct references to the atrocities of the Red Army, pogroms against the Jews, and Babel’s own semi-autobiographical accounts of life growing up. Babel is sometimes salty and is highly idiomatic throughout, some examples of which are these lines: “I don’t want you, Rook, like no one wants to die; I don’t want you like a bride doesn’t want pimples on her head”, and “Beyond the window, stars scattered like soldiers relieving themselves – green stars across a dark blue field.”As I read, I thought I was getting a glimpse into the reasons Babel was dangerous to the Soviet Union, but it was interesting to find he was targeted instead because of his affair with the wife of NKVD chief Nikolai Yezhov. My favorite story was ‘Karl-Yankel’, in which a communist party member takes his mother-in-law to court for having his newborn son circumcised, and for having calling his son Yankel instead of the name he’s chosen, which is Karl, after Karl Marx. It’s presented as a farce, but quite clearly shows the conflict between the Soviet state and Judaism, and in the trial rabbis show up because the “Jewish faith itself would be on trial.” Other nice stories are ‘The Story of My Dovecote’, ‘First Love’, ‘In the Basement’, and ‘The Awakening’, which were written between 1925 and 1931, a golden period for him, before he was disillusioned while travelling to Ukraine and before Stalin began cracking down on artistic expression. Babel’s short stories didn’t blow me away, but were certainly worth reading.