NRC Leesclub Live: The Red Cavalry, by Isaak Babel

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A valued tradition of the festival: the NRC Reading Club Live. Visitors read a book and give their opinion. But first we give the floor to the panel, consisting of Elsbeth Etty, Bas Heijne and guest editor Sana Valiulina, and hosted by Michel Krielaars, head of the book pages of NRC Handelsblad. This time we read The Red Cavalry from the collected stories by Isaak Babel.

Isaak Babel (1894-1940) has many admirers, also in the Netherlands, from writers Tommy Wieringa to Arnon Grunberg, from book critics Arjan Peters (Volkskrant) to Michel Krielaars (NRC Handelsblad). His Red Cavalry Stories are among the master pieces in Russian literature. The stories were recently published anew in an elegant new translation, in a hardback edition by Van Oorschot Publishers. 

In the Red Cavalry Stories Isaak Babel wrote about his experiences during the Polish-Russian war, to which he was sent by his literary mentor Gorki 'to discover real life'. The stories are full of blood and random killings, told in a down-to-earth style, and that's what makes them so penetrating.

Isaak Babel supported the Bolshevist revolution but he couldn't and didn't want to close his eyes for its sometimes gruesome consequences and that's exactly what he wrote about. That's why the police and the censors were after him all the time. He was arrested in 1939 and sentenced to death and executed on Stalin's orders.

"You get into a trance by Isaak Babel's incredible style." (Arjan Peters, Volkskrant)

"All in all Babel is the artist convincing the reader of a completely new vision of the world." (New York Review of Books)

Don't forget to read the book, and bring it with you!

Information

Date and time Saturday 18 January 2014 from 14:00 to 15:30 hrs
Location Theater aan het Spui - Zaal 2

Line-up

Michel Krielaars

(Netherlands, 1961) is a writer, journalist and, since 2012, Editor-in-Chief of the literature section of NRC newspaper. He studied history and Russian at the University of Amsterdam. Krielaars has written novels, a short-story collection, and various books about Russian history. Het brilletje van Tsjechov (Through Chekov's Glasses) was published in 2014, a report of his travels through Russia in the footsteps of the famous author. His book Reizen door Rusland (Travels through Russia) earned high praise and won the 2015 Bob den Uyl Prize. Alles voor het moederland (Everything for the Mother Country, 2017) tells about Stalin's reign of terror in the times of Isaak Babel and Vasili Grossman.
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Elsbeth Etty

(Hulshorst, NL, 1951) received the Anne Vondeling Award for political journalism in 2008, owing to her sharp analyses of social problems. She is a journalist in the widest sense of the word. Besides being an editor and columnist with the NRC Handelsblad newspaper, she makes frequent appearances on radio and TV. In 2007 she debuted as a novelist with Maak jezelf maar klaar (Go Get Yourself Off), in which one of the characters from Harry Mulisch's The Discovery of Heaven figures as a main character. Etty obtained her Ph.D. with distinction from Utrecht University with a biography of Henriëtte Roland Holst, Liefde is heel het leven niet (Love Is Not All of Life, 1996). Her newspaper columns appeared in four different books. Her reviews were compiled in Dames gaan voor - Van Hella Haasse to Connie Palmen (Ladies First: From Hella Haasse to Connie Palmen, 1999). Etty is a special lecturer in Literary Criticism at the Free University in Amsterdam, and is now at work on a biography of the late Dutch poet and songwriter Willem Wilmink.
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Bas Heijne

(Nijmegen, NL, 1960) writes essays, short stories and plays, and is a columnist with the daily newspaper NRC Handelsblad. He published the novels Laatste woorden (Last words) and Suez and received the Henriëtte Roland Holst Prize in 2005. In 2011's Moeten wij van elkaar houden, het populisme ontleed (Do We Have to Love One Another? Populism Dissected) Heijne shows how globalisation and individualism pave the way for populism. Angst en schoonheid (Fear and Beauty) was published in 2013, an essay about Dutch writer Louis Couperus, whom Heijne admires. In the same year his documentary about Couperus was broadcast. In 2015 he hosted the five-part documentary De volmaakte mens (The Perfect Human). In 2016 his essay Onbehagen – nieuw licht op de beschaafde mens (Discontent - new light on civilized man) was published. In 2017 Heijne received the P.C. Hooft Award for his essayistic works.
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Sana Valiulina

(Estonia, 1964) grew up in Tallinn in a family of non-religious Islamic Tatars. She studied Norwegian language and literature in Moscow and moved to Amsterdam in 1989. In 2000 her debut the novel Het Kruis (The Cross) appeared, about life in a student flat in Moscow. In 2002 it was followed by the anthology of novellas Vanuit nergens met liefde (From Nowhere with Love). For her monumental epos Didar en Faroek (2006), about WOII and its aftermath in the Soviet Union she was nominated for the Libris Literatuur Prijs. This love story about two people who are separated by war and terror but eventually succeed in finding each other again, is partly based on her own family history. ‘The novel is reminiscent of the great Russian narrative tradition (...) a monument’, wrote the weekly De Groene Amsterdammer. Following it she aimed her arrows at Dutch society writing Honderd jaar gezelligheid (Hundred Years of Cosiness; 2010). In this novel she wonders what it means to be young in a country where cosiness has become a national obsession. Recently, she published the acclaimed Kinderen van Brezjnev (2014) followed by Winterse Buien of ben ik wel geïntegreerd genoeg (2016).
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