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.
Michael Dirda is a Pulitzer Prize-winning literary journalist and the author of the memoir An Open Book and of four collections of essays: Readings, Bound to Please, Book by Book, and Classics for Pleasure.
Nathalie Babel, his daughter, edited two other books of Babel's writing and is the author of Hugo and Dostoevsky.