Enigma of Isaac Babel
A literary cult figure on a par with Franz Kafka, Isaac Babel has remained an enigma ever since he disappeared, along with his archive, inside Stalin''s secret police headquarters in May of 1939. Made famous by Red Cavalry, a book about the Russian civil war (he was the world''s first "embedded" war reporter), another book about the Jewish gangsters of his native Odessa, and yet another about his ...
A literary cult figure on a par with Franz Kafka, Isaac Babel has remained an enigma ever since he disappeared, along with his archive, inside Stalin''s secret police headquarters in May of 1939. Made famous by Red Cavalry, a book about the Russian civil war (he was the world''s first "embedded" war reporter), another book about the Jewish gangsters of his native Odessa, and yet another about his ...