When the writer Isaac Babel was arrested by Stalin's secret police in May of 1939, he said to A. N. Pirozhkova, his wife of seven years, "They didn't let me finish." Eight months later he was shot by the NKVD - although it would be another fifty years before the full story of his trial and execution was revealed. In At His Side, A. N. Pirozhkova brings to vivd life this man whom many consider to be the greatest prose writer of the Soviet period, a modern master of the short story, and a figure about whom surprisingly little has been known or written.