Babel. Człowiek bez losu

"[Isaac Babel] was a virtuoso of first sentences - it was said that Russia had not known such a stylist since Gogol. He was also a master of biographical fabrication - although he was born into a Jewish merchant family, he created a revolutionary biography of a Soviet writer. He published in the Kiev, St. Petersburg and Odesa press, but he made his real career when he began to be printed in Moscow. At the age of thirty-two he found himself at the peak of his fame, but from then on his star in the USSR would only fade." [more information on the publisher's website]