This book provides a new translation of Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky's novel he Return of Munchausen, with an extensive commentary that is accessible to any reader. In the novel the famous old baron, a virtuoso of imaginative creation who has returned to the world, tells of his visit to a fantastic early Soviet Union, and by his inspiring influence raises a poet he befriends to new poetic life. Lively and gripping, engaged with questions of existence and reality, truth and fiction, the tale is extraordinary for depth, intricacy, and manifold connections to works of literature, philosophy, religion, and science. It is illuminated in detail by the commentary, which exhibits these connections with reference to a great variety of writings, both ancient and modern.