The book consists of two autobiographical novels by Vladimir Nabokov, written in Berlin under the pseudonym V. Sirin: “Mashenka” (1926) and “Feat” (1931). Young emigrant Lev Ganin in a German boarding house relives the story of his first love, cut short by the revolution. The power of creative memory allows him to overcome physical separation from Mashenka (whose prototype was Nabokov’s beloved Valentina Shulgina), the pictures of pre-revolutionary Russia recreated by his imagination turn out to be more significant and brighter than the scenery of the present surrounding him. In “Feat” the theme of returning home to Russia is picked up in a different way . Having reinterpreted the model of the classic “novel of education” in the book, Nabokov endows his touching hero with some of his own traits and circumstances. Cambridge graduate with the flowery name Martin Edelweiss, another Russian refugee abroad, dreams of doing something exceptional. He travels around Europe and searches in vain for the use of his abilities. The vague desire that never left him gradually takes shape, and he decides to undertake a feat similar to the mythical descent into Hades - to cross the border of the possible and return to his own Russian childhood.