Isaac Babel
Reading between the lines.
A new translation of “In the Basement.”
Killing the goose.
The great Jewish writer evoked a city—now under threat from Russia’s armies—with a character of its own that has entered into folklore, literature, and the popular imagination.
The great Russian Jewish writer was caught between revolution and daily life, Bolsheviks and Jews, a desire to kill and an inability to pull the trigger. Did he ever choose?
Joyless exuberance.
Babel, Singer, Agnon.
A teenaged boy skips his violin lessons.
“Can it be that ours is the century in which the Jews perish?”
Transcendent mistakes.
What he shared with Isaac Babel.
And what they say about the Soviet Union.
A humorous and poignant picture of the author’s hometown.
A story of the war between old and new.