Background materials include "Selected Letters of Isaac Babel to His Sister and Mother, 1926-1939," a rich collection of letters-sixty-eight in all, as well as "Isaac Babel Through the Eyes of His Contemporaries," reminiscences by the contemporaries who knew Babel best, including Maxim Gorky, Tamara Ivanova (Kashirina), M. N. Berkov, and Dmitry Furmanov, among others.
"Criticism" reprints four major assessments of Babel's legacy by Viktor...