Isaac Babel(18941941) was a short-story writer, playwright, and correspondent with the Red Army forces during the Russian civil war. He died in a Soviet gulag in 1941. Efraim Sicherteaches at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. David McDuffhas translated works by Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky for Penguin Classics.
Nathalie Babel, his daughter, edited two other books of Babel's writing and is the author of Hugo and Dostoevsky.