Of Sunshine and Bedbugs

Isaac Babel was a short-story writer, playwright, literary translator and journalist. He joined the Red Army as a correspondent during the Russian civil war. The first major Russian-Jewish writer to write in Russian, he was hugely popular during his lifetime. He was murdered in Stalin's purges in 1940, at the age of forty-five.Boris Dralyuk is the translator of Isaac Babel, Andrey Kurkov and other authors. A widely published poet and critic, he is the author of My Hollywood and Other Poems (2022), and is the recipient of the 2022 Gregg Barrios Translation Prize from the National Book Critics Circle and of a 2024 Literature Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He teaches English and Creative Writing at the University of Tulsa and is the editor-in-chief of Nimrod International Journal.

Compact, irreverent, enigmatic, savage and tender... it is impossible to look at the world the same way after reading Babel... one of the enduring jewels of 20th-century Russian literature

• Translator’s Preface 7Guy de Maupassant 11Part I: Childhood and YouthThe Story of My Dovecote 25First Love 42In the Basement 53The Awakening 67Di Grasso 78Part II: Gangsters and Other “Old Odessans”The King 87How It Was Done in Odessa 97Lyubka the Cossack 111Father 121Justice in Quotes 134The End of the Almshouse 143Part III: Red CavalryCrossing the Zbrucz 159 The Catholic Church in Novograd 162A Letter 166Pan Apolek 172The Italian Sun 183Gedali 188My First Goose 193The Rebbe 199The Tachanka Doctrine 203The Death of Dolgushov 207The Life Story of Pavlichenko, Matvei Rodionych 213Salt 221The Rebbe’s Son 227Argamak 231Notes 239Bibliographic Information 254