Sigizmund Krzizhanovsky (1887-1950) studied law and classical philology at Kiev University. In his philosophical and satirical stories with fantastical plots, he ignored official injunctions to portray the new Soviet state in a positive light, and three separate efforts to print different collections were quashed by the censors, a fourth by World War II. Two of his short story collections, Autobiography of a Corpse and Memories of the Future, and his novels The Letter Killers Club and The Return of Munchhausen are also available as NYRB Classics.
Joanne Turnbull's translations from Russian in collaboration with Nikolai Formozov include Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky's The Letter Killers Club (winner of the AATSEEL Prize for Best Literary Translation into English) and Autobiography of a Corpse (winner of the PEN Translation Prize).