Georgy Shengeli called Sigismund Krzhizhanovsky a “missed genius.” “I’m not at odds with today, but eternity loves me,” the writer himself said about himself. He did not see any of his books; the first book was published thirty-nine years after his death. Now he is called the “Russian Borges”, “Russian Kafka”, he is translated into European languages, published, studied and, most importantly, read with enthusiasm. Krzhizhanovsky's short stories are the brightest examples of intellectual prose; they are as elegant as chess studies, but in each of them the pulse of time is felt and paths to the eternal mysteries of existence are outlined.