"Protection of Luzhin" (1929-1930) - the third Russian novel by Vladimir Nabokov, which made the author a loud literary name and brought him to the first row of writers of the Russian abroad . Behind the vicissitudes of the life history of the brilliantly one-sided hero of the book, the gifted and insane Russian chess-emigrant Alexander Ivanovich Luzhin, the reader gradually opens a constant and most important theme of Nabokov’s creativity the development and repetition of secret themes in human destiny. Chess defense, developed by Luzhin, gradually becomes an allegory of protection from life itself, in which his diseased consciousness sees someone's sinister actions, similar to chess moves. In the events of his own biography, Luzhin sees the consequence of the fateful actions of his invisible opponent - fate, and, having failed in attempts to unravel its hidden patterns, he chooses the only possible solution - exit from the game.