Daniil Kharms (Yuvachev; 1905–1942) was one of the key figures in Russian literature of the last century, a leading figure in the Russian and international avant-garde of the 1920s and 1930s, a renowned children's writer, and a man whose appearance and lifestyle inspired legends and anecdotes. This biography of D. Kharms is based on his own diaries and notes, the memoirs of those close to him, and archival materials. It contains a number of new facts about the writer and his family. The book features Kharms's comrades in OBERIU (the 'Association of Real Art')—Alexander Vvedensky, Nikolai Oleinikov, and Nikolai Zabolotsky—and his intellectual interlocutors, the philosophers Yakov Druskin and Leonid Lipavsky. More than two hundred illustrations include reproductions of drawings and photographs by Kharms and his contemporaries. Valery Shubinsky has published many unique documents for the first time.