Annotations by Alexey Sklyarenko

Describing Ada’s eyelids, Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Ada, 1969) uses the phrase v skladochku (pleaty):

In VN’s novel Look at the Harlequins! (1974) Other Books by the Narrator include The Red Top Hat (1934):

Since 1925 I had written and published four novels; by the beginning of 1934 I was on the point of completing my fifth, Krasnyy Tsilindr (The Red Top Hat), the story of a beheading. None of those books exceeded ninety thousand words but my method of choosing and blending them could hardly be called a timesaving expedient. (2.2)

At the dinner in Bellevue Hotel Dorothy Vinelander (in VN’s novel Ada, 1969, Ada’s sister-in-law) invites Van to her brother’s ranch and uses the phrase massa interesnago (heaps of interesting stuff):

In VN’s novel Priglashenie na kazn’ (“Invitation to a Beheading,” 1935) Cincinnatus’s brother-in-law sings from an opera:

The narrator and main character in VN’s novel Otchayanie (“Despair,” 1934), Hermann is a chocolate manufacturer. The trademark on the wrapper of Hermann's chocolate shows dama v lilovom (a lady in lilac), with a fan:

Looking for the title of his manuscript, Hermann (the narrator and main character in Despair) considers Zerkalo ("A Mirror"), Skhodstvo (“The Likeness”) and Poet i chern’ (“The Poet and the Rabble”):

On his way to Koenigsdorf Hermann (the narrator and main character in Despair) meets two schoolboys with unpleasant birdlike features that make him think of voronyata (young crows):

At the beginning of VN’s novel Look at the Harlequins! (1974) Vadim Vadimovich mentions the Glowworm Group directed by Ivor Black, a fine amateur actor:

In his essay The Texture of Time (1924) Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Ada, 1969) mentions Alice in the Camera Obscura, a book that was given to him on his eighth birthday:

As he speaks to dying Rack (Lucette’s music teacher who was poisoned by his jealous wife Elsie and dies in Ward Five of the Kalugano hospital), Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Ada, 1969) mentions the “agony of agony,” Professor Lamort’s felicitous pleonasm: