Other Shores is an autobiographical memoir by Vladimir Nabokov, a Russian-American classic writer, author of the novels The Real Life of Sebastian Knight, The Gift, and the controversial Lolita. The book was originally published in 1951 under the title Conclusive Evidence, three years later an expanded version translated into Russian by Nabokov himself was published under the title Other...

Vladimir Nabokov began working on his first novel, tentatively titled Happiness, in 1924 in Berlin. By the end of the year, the first two chapters of the book were ready, but the writer soon decided to destroy the manuscript. Only a small excerpt survived, which Nabokov reworked into a short story and published in January 1925 under the title Letter to Russia. He decided to return to the...

This is the childhood advice given by an aunt to Russian born writer Vadim Vadimovich, who emigrates to England, then Paris, then Germany and then the US. Now dying, he reconstructs his past. He remembers Iris his first wife, Annette his long-necked typist, and Bel his daughter, as well as his own bizarre illness, 'numerical nimbus syndrome'.

As a young boy, Luzhin was unattractive, distracted, withdrawn, sullen--an enigma to his parents and an object of ridicule to his classmates. He takes up chess as a refuge from the anxiety of his everyday life. His talent is prodigious and he rises to the rank of grandmaster--but at a cost: in Luzhin' s obsessive mind, the game of chess gradually supplants the world of reality. His own...

The purpose of this self-study guide, which includes sixteen lessons, is to help the reader quickly and effectively master the Georgian language without resorting to the help of a tutor. The book covers the entire volume of grammatical and lexical material necessary for studying the language at the initial levels A1 and A2. The authors tried to present the grammatical material in the most...

The purpose of this self-study guide, which includes 16 lessons, is to help the reader quickly and effectively master the English language. The book presents the most important information about correct pronunciation, basic grammar topics, rules for constructing an English sentence, and also provides texts for reading. The material is presented in the most understandable and accessible way and...

Revolutions do not happen unexpectedly, empires do not perish out of the blue. The main lesson we can learn from the 1917 revolution is an understanding of why the emperor and his entourage, in a situation that required radical internal reforms, not only did not dare to carry out these reforms, but, on the contrary, tried with all their might to reverse the country's development, strengthening...