The Collected Stories Author:Isaac Babel "The world of Babel--full of brutal clashes, morbid sexuality and oppositions of moods--is that of a romantic, but its tension and poetic melancholy are perfectly controlled. His stories are elegant and laconic, their structure is always tightly balanced, and terrifying or horrible episodes are rendered in beautifully polished phrases...Babel t... more »he romantic, who in the end could not accept the lifeless dogma of Communist conformism and was indicted and destroyed by it, Babel the master of irony and lyricism, the remarkable storyteller of l'entre deux guerres, Babel the brilliant representative of Russian modern literature deserves to be read and appreciated by large sections of the American public."