Daniil Kharms was a representative of avant-garde trends in the Soviet literature. During his lifetime, Kharms was best-known for his humorous children's stories. His other works, held in private archives, were rediscovered in the late 1960s and today his fame rests chiefly on his experimental, absurd prose pieces. The critic August Nemo has selected seven short stories by this author that remain surprising and innovative: - Symphony no. 2 - On phenomena and existences - No. 1 - The thing - Andrey Semyonovich - An unexpected drinking bout - The destiny of a professor's wife - The memoirs of a wise old man

Absurdist fiction is a genre of fictional narrative (traditionally, literary fiction), most often in the form of a novel, play, poem, or film, that focuses on the experiences of characters in situations where they cannot find any inherent purpose in life, most often represented by ultimately meaningless actions and events that call into question the certainty of existential concepts such as truth or value. The critic Augst Nemo selected seven short stories of the absurd for his appreciation: - A Country Doctor by Franz Kafka - In the Penal Colony by Franz Kafka - Before the Law by Franz Kafka - Ex Oblivione by H. P. Lovecraft - Andrey Semyonovich by Daniil Kharms - A sonnet by Daniil Kharms - Symphony no. 2 by Daniil Kharms For more books with interesting themes, be sure to check the other books in this collection!

This book contains 70 short stories from 10 classic, prize-winning and noteworthy authors. The stories were carefully selected by the critic August Nemo, in a collection that will please the literature lovers. For more exciting titles, be sure to check out our 7 Best Short Stories and Essential Novelists collections. This book contains: - A. E. W. Mason:The Affair At The Semiramis Hotel The Clock Green Paint Ensign Knightley The Man Of Wheels The Coward Keeper Of The Bishop - Julian Hawthorne:David Poindexter's Disappearance. Ken's Mystery. When Half-gods Go, the Gods Arrive. Set Not Thy Foot on Graves. My Friend Paton. The Christmas Guest. The Laughing Mill - Kenneth Grahame:The Twenty-First of October Dies Irae Mutabile Semper The Magic Ring Its Walls Were as of Jasper A Saga of the Seas The Reluctant Dragon - John Kendrick Bangs:The Water Ghost Of Harrowby Hall The Spectre Cook Of Bangletop A Midnight Visitor The Speck On The Lens A Quicksilver Cassandra The Ghost Club A Psychical Prank - Frank R. Stockton:The Bee-Man Of Orn. The Griffin And The Minor Canon. Old Pipes And The Dryad. The Queen's Museum. Prince Hassak's March. The Battle Of The Third Cousins. The Banished King. - Jacques Futrelle:The Problem of Cell 13 The Thinking Machine Five Millions by Wireless Kidnapped Baby Blake, Millionaire The Problem of the Motor Boat The Problem of the Opera Box The Problem of the Vanishing man - Ella D'Arcy:Irremediable White Magic A Marriage In Normandy The Pleasure-Pilgrim The Web of Maya An Engagement - John Buchan:Politics and the Mayfly The Keeper of Cademuir The Wife of Flanders The Watcher by the Threshold Comedy in the Full Moon The Herd of Standlan - E. F. Benson:The Room in the Tower Caterpillars Mrs. Amworth Mr. Tilly's Séance Negotium Perambulans How Fear Departed from the Long Gallery The Horror-Horn - Daniil Kharms:Symphony no. 2 On phenomena and existences - No. 1 The thing Andrey Semyonovich An unexpected drinking bout The destiny of a professor's wife The memoirs of a wise old man

As featured in The New Yorker, Harper's, and The New York Times Book Review. Daniil Kharms has long been heralded as one of the most iconoclastic writers of the Soviet era, but the full breadth of his achievement is only in recent years, following the opening of Kharms's archives, being recognized internationally. Thanks to the efforts of translator and poet Matvei Yankelevich, English language readers now have a comprehensive collection of the prose and poetry that secured Kharms's literary reputation a reputation that grew in Russia even as the Soviet establishment worked to suppress it. Both a major contribution for American scholars and students of Russian literature and an exciting discovery for fans of contemporary writers as eclectic as George Saunders, John Ashbery, and Martin McDonagh, Today I Wrote Nothing: The Selected Writing of Daniil Kharmsis an invaluable collection for readers of innovative writing everywhere. Translated from the Russian by Matvei Yankelevich

This book contains 350 short stories from 50 classic, prize-winning and noteworthy authors. Wisely chosen by the literary critic August Nemo for the book series 7 Best Short Stories, this omnibus contains the stories of the following writers: - Sheridan Le Fanu - H. and E. Heron - Charlotte Riddell - Flora Annie Steel - Amelia B. Edwards - Margaret Oliphant - Edward Bellamy - Arnold Bennett - S. Baring-Gould - Daniil Kharms - E.F. Benson - John Buchan - Ella D'Arcy - Jacques Futrelle - Frank Richard Stockton - John Kendrick Bangs - Kenneth Grahame - Julian Hawthorne - A. E. W. Mason - Richard Middleton - Pierre Louÿs - Sir Hugh Seymour Walpole - Ethel Richardson - Gertrude Stein - E. Phillips Oppenheim - Arthur Quiller-Couch - Mór Jókai - Andy Adams - Bertha Sinclair - Fitz James O'Brien - Eleanor H. Porter - Valery Bryusov - John Ulrich Giesy - Otis Adelbert Kline - Paul Laurence Dunbar - Frank Lucius Packard - Barry Pain - Gertrude Bennett - Francis Marion Crawford - William Pett Ridge - Gilbert Parker - Harriet Elizabeth Prescott Spofford - Elizabeth Garver Jordan - Richard Austin Freeman - Alice Duer Miller - Leonard Merrick - Anthony Hope - Ethel Watts Mumford - Anne O'Hagan Shinn - B. M. Bower

From the reign of the Tsars in the early 19th century to the collapse of the Soviet Union and beyond, the short story has long occupied a central place in Russian culture. Included are pieces from many of the acknowledged masters of Russian literature - including Pushkin, Turgenev, Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, and Solzhenitsyn - alongside tales by long-suppressed figures such as the subversive Kryzhanowsky and the surrealist Shalamov. Whether written in reaction to the cruelty of the bourgeoisie, the bureaucracy of communism or the torture of the prison camps, they offer a wonderfully wide-ranging and exciting representation of one of the most vital and enduring forms of Russian literature.