Presents the collected short stories of a master of the form, along with his letters, plays, diaries, and screenplays.

A collection of “electric, heroically wrought” Russian short stories of violence, crime, and sex set in Ukraine—for fans of hard-boiled fiction by Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett (John Updike) Odessa was a uniquely Jewish city, and the stories of Isaac Babel—a Jewish man, writing in Russian and born in Odessa—uncover its tough underbelly around the time of the Russian Revolution. 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 Babel’s narratives set in the city and includes the original stories as well as later tales. “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.” —Vice

To read Babel is to experience the wild and often terrifying swings of Russian history."--BOOK JACKET.

Isaac Emmanuilovich Babel, better known as Isaac Babel, was a Soviet journalist and writer of Jewish origin. Despite being an idealistic advocate of Marxism and Leninism, he was arrested, tortured, and executed during Stalin's Great Purge. "The Odessa Stories" a collection published in 1931, is a selection of beautiful stories by Babel whose narratives take place in the city of Odessa. Babel describes, among other stories, the life of the fictional Jewish mafia boss, Benya Krik, one of the great anti-heroes of Russian literature, and his gang in the Moldavanka ghetto during the time of the October Revolution. Isaac Babel is a master of conciseness. This characteristic was emphasized by the writer himself when he once declared that while Tolstoy could narrate minute by minute everything that happened to him throughout a day, he preferred to focus on the five most interesting minutes. It is a fact that Isaac Babel's narratives are profoundly interesting. An excellent and captivating read.

A new selection of Isaac Babel's 26 most vital and beautiful stories, in acclaimed translations by Boris Dralyuk Isaac Babel honed one of the most distinctive styles in all Russian literature. Brashly conversational one moment, dreamily lyrical the next, his stories exult in the richness of everyday speech and sensual pleasure only to be shaken by brutal jolts of violence. These stories take us from the underworld of Babel's native Odessa, city of gangsters and lowlives, of drunken brawls and bleeding sunsets, to the terror and absurdity of life as a soldier in the Polish-Soviet War. Selected and translated by the prize-winning Boris Dralyuk, this collection captures the irreverence, passion and coarse beauty of Babel's singular voice.

Isaac Babel: The Essential Fictions is a collection of seventy-two of Isaac Babel's finest short stories and includes Red Cavalry, Odessa Stories, and the "Dovecote" cycle. Newly edited, translated, and annotated by Val Vinokur, this collection also features illustrations by Babel's fellow Odessan Yefim Ladyzhensky.

Examines the theme, characters, plot, style and technique of more than 1,200 nineteenth- and twentieth-century works by prominent authors from around the world.

Black Mask, the greatest American detective magazine of all time, is back with another issue. This time around, it includes nine new stories in the Black Mask vein by Brian Townsley, Jane Jakeman, Brian Stanley, Hannah Honeybun, William Burton McCormick, Frank Megna, Jonathan Sheppard, Michael Bracken, Jim Doherty, as well as a new article on Raymond Chandler’s The Little Sister by Katrina Younes. In addition, Boris Dralyuk has kindly supplied his translation of Isaac Babel’s “Lyubka the Cossack” and arranged for its reprinting here. And, as with previous issues, Black Mask collects some of the best hard-boiled detective fiction from the Popular Publications vaults, as written by some of the genre’s best: Dashiell Hammett, D.L. Champion, Carroll John Daly, Frederick Nebel, T.T. Flynn, and Frederick C. Davis.