The book traces for the first time the tragic path of the writer I. Babel, imprisoned in Stalin’s dungeons, from the moment of his arrest to his execution in one of the Moscow prison basements. Based on documentary materials from the archives of the Federal Security Service, the Main Military Prosecutor's Office and the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR, as well as personal meetings of the author with figures of Russian Soviet culture, the work contains previously unknown facts from the public life of those years, which will undoubtedly be of interest to a wide readership audience.