David McDuff, translator of Isaac Babel's Red Cavalry and Other Stories (1994), describes the author as a shadowy figure. His life, which is for the most part undocumented, ended obscurely with his arrest by the Stalinist secret policy and his death in 1940 at the age of 46.
His daughter Nathalie was ten years old and living in France at the time. In her introduction to The Lonely Years, a collection of stories and correspondence published in 1964, she says that she grew up
...wishing that some day, somewhere, a door would open and my father would come in. We would recognize each other immediately, and without seeming surprised, without letting him catch his breath, I would say, "Well, here you are at last. We've been puzzled about you for so long; although you left behind much love and devotion, you bequeathed us very few facts. It's so good to have you here. do sit down and tell us what happened."
© Linda Leith
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This is the kind of man that young men of my generation and perhaps a younger generation must have wanted to be, especially young men who wanted to write.
Graham Greene, The Comedians (NY: Viking, 1965) is available from Abebooks.
Jennifer Quist is an Alberta writer whose first novel, Love Letters of the Angels of Death, is published today by Linda Leith Publishing. This interview took place on the eve of publication.
Jennifer Quist
This is, in short, the busiest time of the year for literary publishers here, perhaps even more so than elsewhere in Canada, since the Quebec industry takes its lead from France in its single-minded focus on the fall.
Kim Thuy
Jack Kerouac wrote several unpublished works in French. Norman Ravvin explores the seminal author's Quebec roots.
