Irina Odoevtseva’s memoirs “On the Banks of the Neva” have been read and reread for several decades, but the riddles and secrets have not yet been revealed. Oleg Lekmanov is a philologist, professor at the Higher School of Economics, who has written books about Osip Mandelstam, Sergei Yesenin and Venedikt Erofeev, – studied the famous text, breaking it down into many components. “The guide to the book “On the Banks of the Neva” is a dialogue between the author and the researcher. “I always wanted to know where Odoevtseva’s truth is, where is fiction, where are memory errors or conscious exaggerations” (Dmitry Bykov).