Isaak Babel is a wonderful Russian writer of the first half of the twentieth century, a soulful, subtle and ironic storyteller, the author of the immortal “Cavalry” and the literary father of the famous Benya Krik from the “Odessa Stories” series. Babel went through the civil war with Budyonny’s First Cavalry Army. A master of the short story, a heartfelt, ironic and outwardly dispassionate storyteller, Babel managed to create his own artistic world - scary and attractive at the same time, in which there is a place for love and death, grief and joy, contempt for danger and the ability to enjoy life, in which the high and the high are closely intertwined. low. The illustrations for this book were specially prepared by the famous St. Petersburg artist Anton Lomaev.