The work of Daniil Kharms was lost to the West for many years. A poet and black humorist, creator of Russia's short-lived literature of the absurd, Kharms shared the fate of many of his contemporaries. His work, which was passed from hand to hand after his disappearance in 1941, began to surface in print only in the late 1960s. But in spite of a number of recent publications, Kharms remains largely unknown and misunderstood. His eccentric, often grotesque stories are too easily dismissed as lacking depth. Part of this misunderstanding stems from an incomplete knowledge of Kharms's work: because Western readers are limited to published materials, they are unable to perceive the strong religious strain that underlies much of Kharms's writing.