Babel’s Extended Ode to Odessa
'Odessa' by Isaac Babel
Translated by Val Vinokur
Photo by Igor Sytnik
Odessa is a nasty town. Everybody knows this. Instead of saying “what’s the difference,” over...
Orwell: The Wild Man
This essay forms the core of the book “Orwell & The Refugees: The Untold Story of Animal Farm”
“If you look into your mind, which...
On The Languages Of Ukrainian Poetry
The events of the past two years have divided Ukrainian poets no less than they have divided other sectors of society. The Russian-language publishing...
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...
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,...
Nineteenth Century Travelers In Odessa
Ernest Hemingway’s famous observation in his memoir ‘A Movable Feast’’, in which he describes Paris as “the place best organized for a writer to...
I Am A Jew!
Viktor Yerofeyev is one of the best known Russian writers working today, the author of modern classics such as “Life with an Idiot” (which...
Gapa Guzhva
Val Vinokur has just published "The Essential Fictions," a newly translated collection of the works of Odessan Jewish writer Isaac Babel. This story was...
A Dialogue About That ‘Infamous Odessan’ Language With Boris Khersonsky
This interview is based on a transcription of a radio interview that took place between Igor Pomerantsev and The Odessa Review contributing author and...
The Escape
Translated from the Ukrainian by Reilly Costigan-Humes and Isaac Stackhouse Wheeler. “The Escape” was published in Andriy Lyubka’s 2016 book of short fiction “A...
