Nathalie Babel was the daughter of the Jewish-Russian writer Isaac Babel and the painter Yevgenia Gronfein. She was born and raised in Paris, where her mother went to live after the Russian Revolution. After surviving the Holocaust, Nathalie emigrated to the USA, where she married Richard Brown, a sociologist. Nathalie taught French and literature at Barnard College and at colleges and universities in Texas and California. She also became an Isaac Babel scholar, editing collections of her father's letters and helping to translate his works.
