Istinnaia zhizn' Sevast'iana Naiti [The Real Life of Sebastian Knight]

The book includes the first English-language novel by Vladimir Nabokov, written in 1938-1939 in France and published in 1941 in the United States. Associated with 'The Gift', the last Russian novel of the writer, the theme of literary creation, this book simultaneously predicts the sophisticated Nabokov's maze novels of the American period - 'Lolita', 'Pale Fire', 'Hell'. On the pages of the book, the narrator of which is named only with the initial V. Gradually, the line separating the narrator from the object of his narrative-investigation is blurred, forcing readers to doubt both the identity of the biographer and the death of the main character of the book ... The novel is published in translation by Gennady Barabtarlo and is accompanied by a preface, notes and a detailed final sketch of the translator.