Literature

Literature

Babel: the Black Sea Bard

The Odessa Review pays tribute to Odessa’s most influential and inspirational literary figure Isaac Babel’s short story collections, ‘The Odessa Tales’ and ‘Red Cavalry’ remain...

The Art and Science of Translating Babel

In 1929, the great American literary critic Lionel Trilling read a book “about Soviet regiments of horse operating in Poland” that disturbed him, charged,...

Mickiewicz in Odessa by Artur Grabowski

Mickiewicz had been sentenced by trial a few months earlier, instigated by the emperor against a group of Wilno university students for an...

Irena Karpa And Fifi Bristoche Discuss Their Collaboration In A Paris Cafe

The Odessa Review’s managing editor Regina Maryanovska-Davidzon met up with the well known Ukrainian writer Irena Karpa in a Paris Cafe. The singer and song...

A Conversation About Contemporary Ukrainian Poetry With Ukraine’s Renowned Poet Serhiy Zhadan

Serhiy Zhadan’s youthful looks in his early 40’s are symbolic of this cult status among Ukraine’s younger generation. The events of the Maidan have...

My Path To Bruno Schulz, The Messiah From Drohobych

Bruno Schulz, the great Jewish, Polish and Ukrainian Modernist writer, has become a cult favorite in the decades after he was murdered by a...

On Laurence Oliphant: The Most Interesting and Banal Travel Writer of All Time

I invite you, dear reader, to try out the following anthropological experiment the next time you are on a transcontinental flight: wander about the...

On Finding Babel: An Interview With David Novack

The American documentary film maker David Novack has been coming to Odessa for more than twenty years in connection with his interest in the...

In Search Of Mykola Bazhan’s Legacy On The Eve Of Commemorations Of Babyn Yar

Mykola Platonovich Bazhan (1904-1983) was one of the greatest Ukrainian poets of the twentieth century. He cemented his literary reputation in the 1920’s as...

Taking Isaac Babel to Canada

Hip Hop innovator ‘Socalled’ reflects on adapting Babel’s Odessa Tales for Canadian audiences – in Yiddish! I had first discovered Babel’s writing by accident rummaging...