RARES LIVRES ET AUTOGRAPHES: Antique Books § Autographs, including Russian Books, Rare & Lifetime Editions, Photographs § Works on Paper Thursday, October 23, 2025 - 14:30
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BABEL ISAAC (1894-1940) Konarmiya. Ispravlennoe V–VI izdanie. [Konarmia. Revised 5th-6th edition.] Moscow; Leningrad: Gikh, 1931.

Lot 714
Sold
124, [4] pp.; 18x12 cm. In a publisher’s cardboard binding, decorated in a constructivist style. Good condition. Scuffs and stains on the binding, mark from a sticker on the top cover, painted over on the flyleaf, title page, and several other pages. The book is a collection of 34 short stories written in 1923-1925; in 1937, after the publication of this edition, a 35th story was written. All of them are united by the theme of the Civil War, the same characters and time period, and are based on the diary that the author kept while serving in the First Cavalry Army under the command of Semyon Budyonny during the Soviet-Polish War of 1920. The last edition of the book published during the author’s lifetime appeared in 1933; in 1940, I. Babel was shot on trumped-up charges, and all his works were banned until the 1950s. He was rehabilitated in 1954.


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