Maik Yohansen (1895–1937) was a witty and innovative modernist writer in 1920s Ukraine. This small selection of his work includes How to Write Short Stories, a whimsical guide to the art of short-story writing, informed by Formalist and Marxist criticism the author can’t help lampooning. It also includes Shop Signs in Kharkiv, a short and irreverent essay on language politics in Soviet Ukraine a decade after the fall of the Russian Empire. And it includes an autobiography and a selection of Yohansen’s masterful poetry in the original and translation.

Edited and translated by Eugene Ostashevsky, it is introduced by Galina Babak. This is the second volume of sdvig: translingual avant-garde series.