The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen is a collection of stories about a fictional German nobleman created by the German writer Rudolf Erich Raspe in his 1785 book. The protagonist is loosely based on a real baron, Hieronymus Karl Friedrich, Freiherr von Münchhausen, who fought for the Russian Empire in the Russo-Turkish War of 1735–1739 and, after it, became famous for telling outrageous tall tales based on his military career. The author of this book adapted them anonymously into a literary form that was doomed to become of the most famous books in the world's history.