The reader is invited to the first English-language novel by Vladimir Nabokov, written in 1938–1939 in France and published in 1941 in the USA. Connected with The Gift, the writer's last Russian novel, the theme of literary creativity, this book simultaneously predicts Nabokov's sophisticated labyrinthine novels of the American period - Lolita, Pale Fire, Inferno. On the pages of the book, whose narrator is identified only by the initial V., the life story of his half-brother, the late writer Sebastian Knight, unfolds, presented in memoirs, oral histories and excerpts from Knight’s books. Gradually, the line separating the narrator from the object of his investigative narrative blurs, forcing readers to doubt both the identity of the biographer and the death of the book’s protagonist. Eluding V.'s persistent searches, the true life of Sebastian Knight turns out to be directly connected with the mystery of his name, with his writings, with the laws of multilingual verbal art and the metaphysics of Vladimir Nabokov. The novel is published in a new translation by Gennady Barabtarlo and is accompanied by a preface, notes and a detailed final essay by the translator.