Nabokov without Lolita. Guide with maps, pictures and riddles

This book tells different stories about Vladimir Nabokov and the heroes of his works. Funny literary ones, sad human ones - many stories. How Turgenev ran from a monkey, and Nabokov envied him. How Khodasevich believed that there was nothing better than parting with his beloved forever, but Nabokov could not decide whether this was true or not. How Vera Slonim made money while Nabokov was poring over the line. How thousands of emigrants sat at night with empty cigarettes by the stone Berlin canals and solved constellation crosswords. As a “master of fasting,” Jolly did not eat for 44 days. How Joseph Roth saw two women in the window - an elderly one with a trough and a young one with an advertised washing machine. How Alexey Balabanov wanted to film Camera Obscura, depicting the advancing fascism. How Fet rhymes with Musset, Blok with oranges, men with birds, and women with flowers. How a boy races through the forest for five hours on a bicycle to see a girl, and the tire bursts. How beautiful is a pipe turned out onto a winter street, “covered with a quiet layer of snow, with two holes and a mysterious depth.” How Sirin mocks Freud from text to text, and the sky above the crematorium in Wilmersdorf turns into blue lard. Why does the hero of “The Gift” Fyodor Godunov-Cherdyntsev have two dates of birth, like the narrator in “Despair” does not see what he himself is talking about, and grandmaster Luzhin is dissatisfied with the relative positions of the continents.