(in 100 words or less):
An improbable mix of breathtaking poetry and horrifying brutality,
Red Calvary is a collection of short stories written by Isaac Babel based on
his experiences as a Soviet military journalist during Russia’s war with
Poland. Babel, in Dostoyevskian
fashion, doesn’t apologize for the behavior of his Cossack comrades—loutish,
stupid, violent men given to rape
and theft and wanton destruction—yet he manages at the same time to capture
their bravado, their immense lust for life, and even their pathos as they bleed
and die. War, as Babel describes it, magnifies equally all that is good and
evil in man.
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