The book includes two English-language novels by Russian-American writer Vladimir Nabokov, united by the theme of literary creativity and the dual, deceptively elusive structure of the author's artistic Universe. In The True Life of Sebastian Knight (1941), the narrator, identified by the initial V., in trying to write a biography of his half-brother, the late writer, finds himself in a world of fiction that casts doubt on both the identity of the biographer and the death of the title character. In the novel Translucent Objects (1972), the hero-narrator, an employee of the publishing company Hugh Person, who has the ability to “penetrate” the past, turns out to be a character in the works of a certain writer R. (a parody double of Vladimir Nabokov), of which he is a proofreader. Both novels are presented in translations that were first published in 1991 and significantly revised for this edition.