Vladamir Nabokov's first novel, written during his first stay in his adopted city of Berlin in 1926. It was published under his pen name V. Sirin, a reference to a creature from Russian myth with the body of a bird and the head and chest of a woman. Like many of Nabokov's works, it draws on his experience of having fled the Russian Revolution of 1917 for Germany. Lev Glebovich Ganin, a White Russian and former officer, discovers that his neighbor in his Berlin boarding house is now married to his former lover from his days in Russia. Tormented by nostalgia for his home country and lost love, he makes calculated attempts to sabotage their relationship in order to get back with her when she joins her husband in Berlin. Nabokov's particular style is already visible in his first work, with complicated interlocking relationships between characters and ending with an unexpected twist.