The Essential Fictions of Isaac Babel: New translations by Val Vinokur

Book Launch Admission: Free

Isaac Babel was born in 1894 into multicultural Odessa’s thriving Jewish community. Working as a journalist, he witnessed the Bolshevik Revolution and Civil War, and accompanied the Cossack horsemen of the Red Cavalry during the 1920 Polish-Soviet War, distilling these experiences into his fiction. Val Vinokur’s new translations of Babel’s stories highlights Babel’s “horrified hopefulness” and “doleful and bespectacled Jewish comedy” in the face of the bloody conflicts that plagued his generation. Join us at YIVO for the launch of this new book with readings by translator Val Vinokur and discussion with Isaac Babel expert, YIVO’s Executive Director Jonathan Brent.  

About the Author

Val Vinokur is an associate professor of literary studies, chair of liberal arts, and director of Jewish culture at The New School, where he also leads workshops in literary translation. He is the author of The Trace of Judaism: Dostoevsky, Babel, Mandelstam, Levinas (Northwestern University Press, 2008), and has translated several novels from the French with Rose-Myriam Réjouis.