BABEL, Isaak Isaac (J. Harland)

True first edition in English published in London, May 1929. Original orange-coloured cloth, spine decorated black, boards plain (not decorated as US edition). Dust-wrapper partially present. Borzoi logo to lower board. 256[1] pp. Book in very good condition. Very tight and clean. Small isolated damp spots to fore-edges, unobtrusive minor fading to cloth edge. Much remaining of scarce fragile dust-wrapper but in four pieces lacking spine area. See image. Isaac Emmanuilovich Babel Исаак Эммануилович Бабель 1894-1940. The translation of the New York edition (August 1929) attributed to Nadia Helstein, has different pagination, and different text to dust-wrapper. “Stranger still is the unexplained fact that Helstein’s 1929 translation is apparently identical to a translation attributed to a translator named John Harland, published in London the same year by the same publisher” (Vinokur, 2016). Title page verso : “The stories in this book first appeared separately in various Soviet papers and magazines. They were published in book form with the title Konarmia in 1923 by the Moscow publishers ʻRaduga' and then by the State publishers in 1926. This translation has been made from the third, revised,(1928) edition of the latter publishers."