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Plot summary

The narrator, V ("V stands for Victor" as Nabokov revealed to Andrew Field in a letter), is absorbed in the composition of his first literary work, a biography of his half-brother the famous English novelist, Sebastian Knight.

V.’s quest to write Sebastian’s biography gets a new turn when he concludes that there has been a love affair between Sebastian and a Russian woman whose identity was not disclosed by Sebastian. The only hint about the relation of Sebastian to an other woman than his long time fiancée Clare comes to V. when he fulfils Sebastian’s wish to destroy his letters. While burning the love letters, Cyrillic letters of a woman’s handwriting shine from the burning papers for a brief moment. V. begins his search for the woman.

The clue to a painful love affair is a visit of Sebastian to the kurort Blauberg in June 1929, where he supposedly met that Russian woman he had fall in love with. Having a list of four names, V. traces one after other. When V. examines the last name on the list, Mme von Graun, and Nina Lecerf appears instead, not realising the person in question is this pale slender young woman. Hadn’t she not married again V. would have found her former name as Mme de Rechnoy on his list. Nina being told what V.’s intention is, begins to play with V. and pulls all figures white and black. One Knight already missing. As Nina directs his belief his waiting for Mme von Graun, Sebastian’s supposed love affair, will disclose him the truth while she herself could reveal everything, V. falls for her. Her intention to possess Sebastian’s unknown double who appeared like a bold out of the blue grows with the curiosity how far she can pull the strings. A woman like her could not leave this unexpected opportunity unexploited. As a late revelation to Chekhov’s The woman with the lap dog Nabokov’s Mme Lecerf appears at the occasion of the second meeting with V. with her black bulldog. She invites him to her house where she is suggesting he will finally meet Mme von Graun.

Nina panics only shortly while her game is on the verge of getting spoiled by V.’s letter to Mme von Graun about his intention to interview her about the relationship to his half brother. She gets hold of Helene von Braun before V. has the chance to talk to her. Nina’s actual identity, a mystery up to the end of the novel, is finally lifted by V. through a trick of language. As he realises that he falls for Nina the same way his halfbrother did, he escapes her spiders webs when she already had tightened it. The glimpse of tremendous horror at the brink of committing a fatal error appears to him in an instant moment. In a hasty departure he leaves Nina, having come at least as close to the truth as his brother did.