[JEWISH LIFE IN ODESA] Odesskie rasskazy [i.e. Odesa Stories]

Moscow: GIKHL, 1931. 140, [3] pp. 19x12,5 cm. In original illustrated cardboards. Slightly rubbed and bumped, otherwise mint.

First full edition of the well-known literary cycle.

Jewish writer Isaak Babel (1894-1940) was born in Odesa. He graduated from the Odesa Commercial School and the Kyiv Commercial Institute. While studying, Babel made his literary debut with a story "Old Shloime" (1913).
In the early Soviet period, Babel was under the patronage of M. Gorky and M. Koltsov. In 1921, he worked in the Odesa Provincial Committee, being the producing editor of the 7th Soviet printing house, a reporter in Tiflis and Odesa, at the State Publishing House of Ukraine. It was the period when he began to create the cycle " Odesa Stories". At the same time Babel published in the Odesa periodicals "Lava" [Drift] and "Moriak" [Sailor]. In 1923-1924, the magazines "Lef", "Krasnaya Nov"
and other large publications published a row of his stories, which later formed the cycles "Cavalry" and " Odesa Stories". Babel immediately received wide recognition as a brilliant master of words. " Odesa stories" are set in the Odesa ghetto of Moldavanka, both before and after the October Revolution. Separately, the works were published in periodicals in 1921-1924 but were finally collected in the 1931 book.

During the struggle with formalism and the start of the social realist era, Babel noted ironically that "he mastered a new literary genre, the genre of silence". In 1932, he went to Paris and stayed there for a while, doubting whether he needed to return to the USSR. He also managed to visit France in 1935, as part of the delegation of Soviet writers to the International Congress of Writers. In 1939, Babel was arrested and executed. Republished several times until the murder of the
author, " Odesa Stories" were returned to print in the de-Stalinization period.

Worldcat shows paper copies located in Texas University and Vassar College.