These bizarre and wildly imaginative pieces, written in Soviet Russia forty years ago, are as vital and disturbing as the best of today's absurdist literature. The two members of the avant-garde literary group called Oberiu wrote in Leningrad during the late 1920's and the 1930's with no hope of publication.They were arrested injust before World War II and died in 1941 or 1942. The manuscripts circulated in Eastern Europe where George Gibian edited them and translated them. He also contributed an extensive political and cultural background to these works which he subtitled " A Literary Discovery." The book contains a manifesto of the avant-garde Oberiu literary group and a bibliographical note. -- Source of annotation: Marvin or Ruth Sackner.