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Red Cavalry (Pushkin Collection) Paperback – May 12, 2015

by Isaac Babel (Author), Boris Dralyuk (Translator)

23 customer reviews

Book 11 of 72 in the Pushkin Collection Series

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Based on Babel's own diaries that he wrote during the Russo-Polish war of 1920, Red Cavalry is a lyrical, unflinching and often startlingly ironic depiction of the violence and horrors of war. A classic of modern fiction, the short stories are as powerful today as they were when they burst onto the Russian literary landscape nearly a century ago. The narrator, a Russian-Jewish intellectual, struggles with the tensions of his dual identity: fact blends with fiction; the coarse language of soldiers combines with an elevated literary style; cultures, religions and different social classes collide. Shocking, moving and innovative, Red Cavalry is one of the masterpieces of Russian literature.

Pushkin Collection editions feature a spare, elegant series style and superior, durable components. The Collection is typeset in Monotype Baskerville, litho-printed on Munken Premium White Paper and notch-bound by the independently owned printer TJ International in Padstow. The covers, with French flaps, are printed on Colorplan Pristine White Paper. Both paper and cover board are acid-free and Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certified.

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Editorial Reviews

Review

"One of the great stylistic accomplishments of the 20th century... [and] Mr. Dralyuk’s is simply the best translation available." — The Wall Street Journal

"A classic series of wartime sketches in a translation that emphasizes their lyricism and dark comedy. . . Though the stories are brief and deliver a clear message about the frustrations of battle, Babel's rhetoric is never plainly parable- or fablelike; he uses a blunt realism to sketch out scenes that can have a variety of resonances. Writing about war has changed with the times, but war hasn't, and these stories from nearly a century ago remain grimly current. Short but emotionally deep studies of life during wartime." — Kirkus Reviews (Starred Review)

"Red Cavalry remains one of the most powerfully detailed and revealing depictions of a legendary people living through one of the most famously violent experiments of the modern age. . . Babel’s characters are stoic yet passionate, savage yet sophisticated, prone to blind, obstinate rage in one moment, and to sensitive reflection and acts of kindness in the next." — MAKE Literary Magazine

"Red Cavalry is one of Russia’s great books, up there with Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Chekhov, Bulgakov, Turgenev, Gogol, Pushkin, Gorky, Solzhenitsyn. Babel’s brief career is marked by the depth, truth, and vitality of what he was able to complete. Boris Dralyuk’s translation will earn Babel new admirers and place him securely in this canon for readers of Russian literature in English." — Los Angeles Review of Books

"Casual violence ('[he] grabbed her hair, bent back her head and smashed her face with his fist') alternates with beauty, sometimes in the same sentence ('We fled without staining our swords crimson with the wretched blood of traitors')… This translation is of the first 1926 edition, before censorship and the author’s own revisions altered the text." — Publishers Weekly

"Babel’s narrative concision and his ability to shift registers, from the prosaic to the poetic and back, are riveting. . . Babel prefigures the sensibilities of David Simon, juxtaposing grit, gore, humor, and beauty—in a very different kind of ghetto." — Daniel Berchenko, Publishers Weekly Staff Pick

"Fine writing." — East-West Review

"Babel was a literary chameleon – able to vividly capture the voices and characters he met during the brutal years of the Polish-Soviet War (1919-21), where nations barely born were fighting over borders soon to be forgotten. The stories here are gory and profane, funny and disturbing, filled with the blood, anguish and up-close horrors of one of the last wars in Europe fought with sabers and horses... Red Cavalry is an indictment of the banality of armed conflict through the voices of commissars and idealists, revolutionaries and soldiers alike. It should be required reading in every high school, in every nation where people still think wars are worth fighting." - Paul Richardson, Russian Life Magazine

"Isaac Babel’s Red Cavalry, now granted an afterlife in Boris Dralyuk’s lyrical and fluid translation…" - Nirmal Dass, First Things

About the Author

Isaac Babel (born 1894) 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, respected by the Communist authorities and the public alike. But he fell to Stalin's purges, and was murdered in 1940, at the age of 45.

Boris Dralyuk is Assistant Professor in the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures at UCLA. He has translated Leo Tolstoy's How Much Land Does a Man Need and co-translated Polina Barskova's The Zoo in Winter: Selected Poems, and is the co-editor, with Robert Chandler and Irina Mashinski, of the forthcoming Anthology of Russian Poetry from Pushkin to Brodsky.

Product details

Series: Pushkin Collection
Paperback: 192 pages
Publisher: Pushkin Collection (May 12, 2015)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1782270930
ISBN-13: 978-1782270935
Product Dimensions: 4.8 x 0.8 x 6.5 inches
Shipping Weight: 7.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review: 23 customer reviews
Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #388,281 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #4427 in Books > Literature & Fiction > Short Stories & Anthologies > Anthologies
- #4733 in Books > Literature & Fiction > Genre Fiction > War
- #5640 in Books > Literature & Fiction > Short Stories & Anthologies > Short Stories

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Customer Reviews

3.9 out of 5 stars

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A great translation! Better than a lot of the translations ...

March 9, 2015

Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase

A great translation! Better than a lot of the translations of Babel out there.

8 people found this helpful

David A. Burroughs

sympathy, interest, and a wicked sense of humor.

December 6, 2016

Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase

I'm liking the Red Cossacks despite the fact that I abhor their cause and am glad they were defeated in their intention to invade Europe. Babel has sympathy, interest, and a wicked sense of humor.

2 people found this helpful

Outstanding description of a brutal war

November 14, 2015

Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase

A very good description of the Polish Soviet war in the early years of Soviet Russia. The stories are short, many article length (as they were originally intended for many of them). The author goes into the horror of war and its effects on the people who live or rather survive in this environment, both the soldiers and the "civilians". The author explores the descent of his characters into the moral abyss of brutal war. Babel also does not shy of showing faults in the communist party--even though he was an ardent communist. He runs afoul the thought police and ends up in prison and eventually executed by the Soviet government. (Though probably taking the wife of the head of the NKVD as a lover did not help).

I found the read fairly quick read as the writer is a very gifted writer and this is a good translation. The short (sometimes very short) individual stories lend itself to part time reading or reading while you wait say in a doctor's office. The book is very thoughtful and thought provoking.

6 people found this helpful

Excellent stories from an interesting author

November 9, 2017

Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase

During the Russian-Polish War 1919-1921, Isaac Babel was a journalist and propagandist with the Red Army. The first half of this book contains short stories, bringing the horror of war into focus. Babel describes the Polish towns, the Cossacks and Red Cavalry battles, the shteles and pogroms against the Jewish population. A true nightmare of destruction and violence, but written with clarity and insight. Very well done, a fine collection of short stories, gruesome as they are.

The second half is made up of diary entries and sketches for the coming book. A really excellent writer, Babel was killed in Stalin’s Great Purge, in 1940.

Recommended.

4 people found this helpful

November 6, 2012

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

It takes a little time to adjust to Russian writing. Babel writes in short, choppy and sharp sentences that score point after point with the reader. He paints pictures that are clear and vivid and he opens the reader to feel the scene. This is very interesting stuff because he doesn't tell you how to feel, you just will feel.

I believe this work is important because it gives a good look at the early Soviet psyche. This is like seeing a teenage thug before he becomes the gangster.

Read and savor. If you consider yourself a reader but haven't read Babel---start here.

Chris Reich, TeachU.com

12 people found this helpful

Amazon Customer

and it was a relatively easy book. Considering the context behind the book

March 30, 2017

Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase

Had to read the book for class, and it was a relatively easy book. Considering the context behind the book, it is extremely enlightening and the book itself is an important piece of history. I recommend it.

One person found this helpful

August 30, 2013

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

Beautiful, sharp, powerful stories. A shame Babel isn't more widely read - and taught - in the U.S. (Red Calvary would be an excellent addition to world literature curricula at the advanced high school level - the stories are thrilling, and there is so much here to learn about the history of Russia's civil war.)

5 people found this helpful

March 27, 2015

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

Item was as described and arrived quickly.

Most recent customer reviews

Walter R Chesnut

I was not that impressed by the writing.

Published 4 months ago

Hans van den Berg, aka Loudspeaker or Luidspreker

About the sample

I wanted to know if I would like these stories. However, the sample is, as in many cases, only preface after preface.Read more

Published 4 months ago

Basketball Jones

nothing special

Published 9 months ago

Juan Bautista Guglielmetti

Interesting review of a forgotten past

Published 11 months ago

Spencer Williams

A Russian Literary Masterpiece

I love Isaac Babel and Russian Literature in general, but this is a great collection of stories from a primary source who participated in the Russian Civil War in a way you would...Read more

Published 1 year ago

Lyrical, brutal, historically informative, and prophetic

In 1919-20, Isaac Babel served as a journalist and propagandist on the Soviet side in the Soviet-Polish War.The "Russian" Civil Wars, 1916-1926: Ten Years That Shook the World Read more

Published on March 20, 2016

Paul E. Richardson

Much to savor here. Fine translation.

Pushkin Press continues to create books that are not only fine translations (spot comparisons find Dralyuk to be more fluent and truer to Babel’s voice than previous...Russian Life magazine.Read more

Published on January 11, 2016

Kenneth K. Afton

Very disappointed after having read the glowing reviews.

Published on November 12, 2015

A Very Personal War

Excellent vignettes of Russian Civil War, some humerous, some savage. This recounts the reality of one of the most brutal "forgotten" wars of the 20th century from a...Read more

Published on October 31, 2015

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