Collected Stories

This is a collection of stories by Isaac Babel, a 20th century Russian writer who met his death at the hands of Stalin's secret police in 1941. The collection is divided into three segments: an autobiographical series, a series of stories taken from Babel's experience fighting the Polish army in the 1920s, and a third series revolving around a gangster hero in Babel's native Odessa. In the autobiographical series, "The Story of My Dovecot" is an absolutely gut-wrenching description of an anti-semitic pogrom carried out during Babel's youth. The Red Cavalry series is a wonderful tale of the pettiness, misery, humor, and senselessness of warfare. The Odessa stories feature the Jewish gangster, Benya Krik, and the often humorous situations show more that he and his family get themselves into in Odessa. I think Babel did a great job of conveying to the reader not only the experience of being Jewish in Russia in the early 20th century, but he also did a great job of conveying what it was to be a human being caught in the Stalinist machinery of state. show less

This was a very interesting, yet elusive, set of short stories. The setting is distant, but we are pulled into it through the details and the characters which reveal the world that Babel was operating in and how it affected, and influenced, their lives. I think it was good to read, and should be read for those interested in short stories, though I wasn't quite sure how to grasp many of the stories nuances and I feel that much of it went over my head. Nevertheless, a challenging and good read.

3 stars.

I'll probably get flak for this but I thought these stories very disappointing. The usual great names of short story writing are thrown around in regards to Babel but I fail to see at all why he deserves to be in such company.

Some of his early sketches are nice and some of the stories from the Red Cavalry section are decent but that's as good as it gets. There always seemed to be a lack of soul to Babel's writing. Some of the stories Babel describes are very sad but they read, to me, like simple accounts of events, rather than stories designed to move the reader. As a result many tales simply felt like the author was going through the motions. There's none of the feeling present in contemporaries like Chekhov or Joyce's short show more stories.

That made it a rather dull collection to read through, despite the short length of all the stories. Perhaps the translation didn't help but I can't see myself returning to these stories to try and discover what I missed. show less

Some of the most luminous short stories written, and the cavalry stories put Hemingway's pretensions to engagement to shame.

These are outstanding stories, especially the group entitled "Red Calvary," written by the enigmatic Russian-Jewish master. As a war correspondent for ROSTA, the Soviet news agency, Babel traveled with a group of Cossacks during the Civil War. "Red Calvary" is the fruit of that experience. He was swept away in one of Stalin's periodic purges and executed as a Trotskyite in 1940.

I don't know if it's the translation, or the way this particular edition is set up, or what, but I just found the stories here a slog—with a few notable exceptions, which I remember enjoying in other anthologies.

Loved the stories, but unfortunately, the translation from Russian was less than adequate. I must re-read it in original.