Author Portrait: Isaac Babel, with Reinhard Krumm & Peter Orner
Join former Soviet Union journalist Reinhard Krumm and author Peter Orner for a conversation about Isaac Babel's life and groundbreaking collection Red Cavalry.
Lunch is provided. Please RSVP to laura.jean.gilloux@dartmouth.edu.
Join former Soviet Union journalist Reinhard Krumm and author Peter Orner for an illuminating conversation about Isaac Babel's groundbreaking collection Red Cavalry, one of the most powerful works to emerge from the Russian Revolution.
Isaac Babel's unflinching portrayal of the Polish-Soviet War through the eyes of a Jewish intellectual embedded with Cossack cavalry units remains a masterpiece of 20th-century literature. His spare, brutal prose captures the chaos and moral complexity of revolutionary violence while exploring themes of identity, belonging, and the cost of ideology. Nearly a century later, Red Cavalry continues to resonate as both historical document and literary achievement.
Reinhard Krumm brings deep expertise in Russian history and firsthand knowledge of post-Soviet realities, having served as Moscow correspondent for Der Spiegel and led regional offices across Eastern Europe and Central Asia. Award-winning author Peter Orner, whose fiction has graced The New Yorker and earned multiple Pushcart Prizes, offers insights into Babel's enduring influence on contemporary literature.
