A review by peter_fischer
Red Cavalry by Isaac Babel

2.0

Series of short stories set in the Polish-Soviet War of 1920. Babel writes the most astoundingly inventive and beautiful descriptions of situations and landscapes, including some grotesque horror-of-war scenes. However, the collected short stories don’t really make up one unified and consistent whole. I read the Dralyuk translation, one of several English translations from the original Russian, probably not one of the better ones. Something of the atmosphere about the scenes described is missing. I could be wrong but I’m pretty sure the original Russian is much better. Unfortunately I have no Russian although I once tried to learn it. It took me ages just to memorise the Cyrillic alphabet and I gave up pretty soon. It would be great though to read the many terrific Russian writers in the original!