Manuscript Found in Zaragoza is one of the most brilliant products of fantasy literature. Its author, the Polish aristocrat Jan Potocki, an erudite archaeologist and historian, worked on it for twelve years, and, supporting his feverish imagination, plagued by obsessions, on his profound knowledge of the strangest facets of science, he managed to turn it into a masterpiece in three literary fields at once; that of ghostly terror, that of eroticism and that of comedy. The influence of Manuscript was extremely powerful in romanticism, in symbolism, in surrealism; and its validity not only remains intact, but continues to increase with the passage of time, both for its extraordinary pleasantness and for the stylistic and imaginative vigor that make it; within the history of literature, one of the most daring explorations of the hidden regions of the mind.