Incidences

This wonderfully inventive collection of stories presents the writing of Russian absurdist Daniil Kharms at its vibrant, perplexing best. The book is composed of short miniatures: strange, funny, dream-like fragments — many of which the author called 'incidents' — that tend to feature accidents, falling, chance violence and sudden death. An outlaw classic banned by Soviet censors until the 1980s, «Incidences» vividly conveys the precarious nature of life in Stalin's Russia. Writing in the 1920s as one of a group called the Society for Real Art, Kharms was first arrested in 1931, and told that he could only publish writing for children. Irrepressible, he was sent to the gulag in 1941 and died of starvation in a prison hospital a year later. With this new edition of «Incidences», we can rediscover a Russian writer whose bold writing and tragic death are an urgent reminder of the deranged spirit of his times.