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.