The volume demonstrates the scope of utopian thinking and the enduring significance of past utopian fictions and historical events as potentially contributing to a more comprehensive understanding of the contemporary reality. The essays examine the concept of utopia in a variety of contexts, such as philosophy, translation, music, social and political issues, like workers¿ movements and ideology, exploring global utopian fiction from medieval Persian poetry, through late 19^th- and early 20^th-century narratives, to contemporary Russian and British dystopian novels. Taken together, the texts attest to the lasting allure of the hopeful utopian visions as well as to the pertinence of the dystopian warnings contained in the darker fictive scenarios and social speculations.