Krzizanovskij summed himself up in one of his notebooks: "I am known for being unknown." Yet he was an authority on Shakespeare and Shaw, a noted scholar, and the author of very popular dystopian and phantasmagoria short stories. Rosenflanz examines the life and work of this Russian modernist, whose imagination used the Russian formalism and futurism then current in new and rich ways, whose skill with the pun rose even to the aural level, and whose life's goal was to resurrect the idea of word as thing in all its permutations: as words, as things, as things-words, and as words-things, even unto words as prophecy, which Rosenflanz interprets as "recollections of the future." Krzizanovskij's being known for being unknown is perhaps rooted in the fact that he was so far ahead that others could not recognize him as leading the charge. Annotation : 2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com).