In his second novel, written in Berlin, The King, the Lady, the Jack (1928), Vladimir Nabokov turns to material from German life and is first taken for an in-depth study of philistine psychology, then continued in Camera Obscura and Despair. Behind the criminal plot with a love triangle lies the masterfully revealed confrontation of two polar lifestyles: stencil, soulless, brought to automatism, and natural, full-blooded, creative. In the conventional world of advertising and fashion magazines, it is as if the very consciousness and nature of the young “lady”, the main character of the book, and vice versa, the life and projects of her husband, the rich merchant Dryer, are filled with unexpected poetry the “king” in the difficult game that is being played with the reader Nabokov. This edition is supplemented by an episode from the expanded English version of the novel, first translated into Russian. PDF A4 format saved publishing layout.