The author of five short novels, more than a hundred stories, a dozen plays, screenplays and librettos, Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky worked in almost total obscurity till his death in 1950. He began writing in the 1920s after moving to Moscow from Kiev, but it was not until 1989 that his work was first published. Described as an "unsung genius" by his contemporary Georgy Shengeli, Krzhizhanovsky's style has been compared to Jonathan Swift, Frank Kafka and Samuel Beckett. The first ever collection of his short stories in English translation, "Seven Stories" (translated by Joanne Turnbull), will be published by Glas in April 2006.

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A new energy source that can save the world from climate crisis and destruction has been discovered: yellow coal, the harnessed energy of human spite. But how long will it last, and what happens when people start to get happy? Written in the 1920s, and rejected by publishers for not being "contemporary", this surreal and darkly comic short story by the "unsung genius" of Russian fiction, describes an anti-utopia that resonates today.