In addition to his numerous works in prose and poetry for both children and adults, Daniil Kharms, (1905-42), one of the founders of Russia's ",lost literature of the absurd,", wrote notebooks and a diary for most of his adult life. Published for the first time in recent years in Russian, these notebooks provide an intimate look at the daily life and struggles of one of the central figures of the literary avant-garde in Post-Revolutionary Leningrad. While Kharms's stories have been translated and published in English, these diaries represents an invaluable source for English-language readers who having already discovered Kharms in translation desire to learn about the life and times of an avant-garde writer in the first decades of Soviet power.

Auteur

Efraim Sicher (PhD Hebrew University) is a full professor at Ben-Gurion University, where he teaches comparative literature. He has published a study of Isaac Babel's prose style, Style and Structure in the Prose of Isaak Babel (Slavica, 1986), has edited two volumes of Babel's stories in Russian and one in English, and has edited the complete works of Babel in Hebrew. He has also published numerous books and articles in Russian and comparative literature and is well known in the field of modern Jewish culture.