The London _Times Literary Supplement_ of 24 Aug 04, p. 22 reviews Catherine Scott-Clarke & Adrian Levy's new boonk_The Amber Room: The Untold Storyof the Greatest Hoax of the Twentieth Century.  The Amber Room was an entire room built in Konigsberg by the king of Prussia as a gift for Peter the Great. It was assembled in Petersberg. In WWII the invading Germans seized the room and sent it back to Prussia where it disappeared in the chaos of the Soviet capture of Konigsberg. Endless rumors and intrigue with the Soviets claiming the German buried it or shipped it west. The Germans assert  looting by the invading Soviet troops  was responsible etc.etc.Secret intelligence services, government and/or private adventurers. One treasure hunter as late as 1987 was stabbed and ritually  disembowelled. One prominent figure in the circle financing the in treasure hunt was Baron Eduard von Falz-Fein, a colorful cousin of VN. Shades  of PALE FIRE!

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William Weld, the ex-governor of Massachusetts, is a longtime Nabokov fan who confessed his admiration in an intereview some years ago in GQ magazine. More recently he has turned his hand to writing popular political satire novels, including BIG UGLY.I note VN makes two fleeting appearances: In one the apparently witless wife of a powerful "downhome" Senate peruses the bookshelves of  the hero and remarks "Oh, you can't have these together......neither would approve. The  quick witted hero's anthropologist wife Emma replies "Omigosh, you're right....The movers must have done it. A bit later the conversation turns to botany, insects, and sex. One character says "The femaleplants  won't accept pollrn unless its from a  male flower, and it has to be from the same kind of tree, no miscegenation, but a different tree. "  Emma replies: " Scient insect, no incest." Th conversation continues on to the fanciful lock and key forms of butterfly genitalia.