Bernard Quaritch Ltd.

BABEL, Isaak Emmanuilovich. Red Cavalry. London, Knopf, 1929.

8vo, pp. 255; a very good copy in the original orange cloth, lettered in black on spine, faint offsetting to endpapers; with the rare original dust-jacket (loss to head and tail of spine, invisible closed tear to front panel).

First edition in English, and the first appearance in English of Babel’s work, translated from the Russian by John Harland. Babel’s most important collection of short prose, Konarmiya (1926, translated as Red Cavalry) describes in graphic detail the abortive Soviet campaign against Poland in 1920, based on diaries and notebooks kept during the author’s own experiences as a journalist and propagandist with the Red Army. ‘It is primarily to this cycle… that Babel owes his reputation as one of [the 20th] century’s masters of the short story’ (Terras).

Line, Ettlinger & Gladstone, p. 34.

£1200

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