First Love by Isaac Babel

The Cossacks are coming!

The title of Isaac Babel’s First Love is cruelly misleading because there is absolutely nothing innocent or romantic about this story. Instead of an sweet tale of youthful infatuation, we are presented with a bleak and harrowing account of Jewish persecution in early 20th-century Russia. The protagonist, a 10-year-old boy, develops a crush—maybe even love—for the older woman next door, but their connection is not built on romance; it’s built on survival. She is sheltering his family, hiding them from Russian authorities who are imprisoning Jews on false pretenses or murdering them outright.

Babel’s prose is intentionally chaotic, reflecting the boy's overwhelming fear and confusion of living in a world where safety is an illusion. There are moments where you can feel the protagonist trying to hold onto something hopeful (his feelings for this woman?) but any sense of comfort is fleeting. He is too young to fully comprehend what is happening around him, but he knows enough to feel the dread, to sense the violence lurking just outside the walls of his fragile refuge.

If you’re looking for a feel-good love story, look elsewhere. This is not a tale of passion or happiness; it is a story of displacement, fear, and the heartbreaking realization that childhood does not grant immunity from suffering. The ending does not bring closure or relief—just the suffocating weight of a world that is both cruel and indifferent.

And then there’s the tragedy of Isaac Babel himself. The fact that his works have survived at all feels like a miracle, considering his own horrific fate. Some sources claim he was executed during Stalin’s purges, while others suggest he perished in Auschwitz. Either way, his life—like his writing—was marked by oppression, injustice, and profound sorrow. Reading First Love in that context makes it even more devastating. It’s not just a story about history’s cruelty; it’s a reflection of the author’s own doomed existence.