Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky

Sigizmund Dominikovich Krzhizhanovsky (, , ; – 28 December 1950) was a Russian and Soviet writer, playwright, philosopher, and historian, who described himself as "known for being unknown". He published only nine stories and a few essays in his lifetime. The majority of his writings were published posthumously.

Krzhizhanovsky wrote screenplays for The Feast of St Jorgen (1929) by Yakov Protazanov and for the stop-motion animated feature film The New Gulliver (1935). He was left uncredited both times. He died in obscurity in 1950. A scholar discovered Krzhizhanovsky's archive in 1976, and started publishing his short stories in 1989. Posthumously, Krzhizhanovsky has gained fame for his short parables and phantasmagoric stories. At least one of them is noted for its Kafkaesque style.

Life Krzhizhanovsky was born in Kiev (now in Ukraine) to a Polish family on 11 February 1887.

Krzhizhanovsky was active among Moscow's literati in the 1920s, while working for Alexander Tairov's Chamber Theater. Several of Krzhizhanovsky's stories became known through private readings and a few publications. His writing style might have been influenced by Robert Louis Stevenson, G. K. Chesterton, Edgar Allan Poe, Nikolai Gogol, E. T. A. Hoffmann, and H. G. Wells.

In 1929 he penned a screenplay for Yakov Protazanov's acclaimed film The Feast of St Jorgen, yet his name did not appear in the credits. He also wrote the screenplay for the 1935 stop-motion animated feature film The New Gulliver, but, again, was left uncredited. (1925), Postmark: Moscow. In Autobiography of a Corpse, trans. Joanne Turnbull (New York Review Books, 2013) (1931), "The Poetics of Titles", trans. Anne O. Fisher, in Countries That Don't Exist: Selected Nonfiction, edited by Jacob Emery and Alexander Spektor (Columbia University Press, 2022)

Translated stories and collections "Quadraturin", trans. Joanne Turnbull, in Russian Short Stories from Pushkin to Buida (Penguin, 2005) 7 Stories, trans. Joanne Turnbull (GLAS New Russian Writing, 2006) Memories of the Future, trans. Joanne Turnbull (New York Review Books, 2009) Autobiography of a Corpse, trans. Joanne Turnbull (New York Review Books, 2013) Unwitting Street, trans. Joanne Turnbull (New York Review Books, 2020) Countries That Don't Exist: Selected Nonfiction, edited by Jacob Emery and Alexander Spektor (Columbia University Press, 2022) Stravaging “Strange”, trans. Joanne Turnbull (Columbia University Press, 2023)