This book brings together works by two of the outstanding talents of Soviet literature, Daniil Kharms and Alexander Vvedensky. It discloses a little-known tradition of absurdism that persisted during the Stalinist period, a testimony to both the hardiness of the Russian imagination in the face of socialist realism and the vitality of an important cultural and literary tradition.

Contents:

• Preface
• Introduction: Daniil Kharms and Alexander Vvedensky
• Mini-Stories by Daniil Kharms
  • The Cashier
  • Fedya Davydovich
  • The Beginning of a Beautiful Day (A Symphony)
  • Symphony No. 2
  • An Unsuccessful Show
  • The Carpenter Kushakov
  • Blue Notebook No. 10
  • Falling-Out Old Woman
  • An Event on the Street
  • A Sonnet
  • Vindication
  • A Meeting
  • Incidents
  • Petrakov
  • A Lynching
  • Losing Things
  • What They Sell in the Stores Nowadays
  • Anecdotes about Pushkin's Life
  • An Optical Illustion
  • A Suite
  • A Young Man Who Astonished a Watchman
  • A Dream
  • Grigoryev and Semyonov
  • A Play
  • Sleep Teases a Man
  • A Fable
  • The Connection
• New Prose Translations by Daniil Kharms
  • Power
  • The Man with the Black Coat
  • The Notebook
  • A Letter
  • From Kharms's Notebooks
  • The Copper Look
  • A Private Letter about Love
  • The Knight
  • The Eleven Assertions of Daniil Ivanovich Kharms
  • A Subject for a Story
  • Crayfish
  • Kind Feelings
  • In an Album
• The Old Woman by Daniil Kharms
• Elizabeth Bam by Daniil Kharms
• Stories for Children by Daniil Kharms
  • A Fairy Tale
  • A Children's Story
  • How Kolka Pankin Flew to Brazil and Petka Ershov Wouldn't Believe Anything
• Christmas at the Ivanov's by Alexander Vvedensky
• Poems in Russian by Alexander Vvedensky and Daniil Kharms
• Appendix: The Oberiu Manifesto