Lecture courses, Prepared in the 1940s and 1950s for students at Wellesley College and Cornell University and first published in 1981. The largest Russian-American writer of the 20th century Vladimir Nabokov appeared before his audience as a thoughtful reader. Astute , a thorough and yet very biased researcher, Temperamental and demanding teacher . In the pages of this volume, Nabokov-lecturer gives an excellent lesson in the "cautionary reading" of the works of Gogol, Turgenev, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Chekhov and Gorky - reading, the method of which is exhaustively described by the author himself. “Literature, real literature, should not be swallowed in a volley, like a drug useful for the heart or mind, this “stomach” of the soul. Literature should be taken in small doses, breaking, crushing, grinding - then you will feel its sweet fragrance in the depths of the palms. It needs to be chewed up with pleasure, rolling your tongue in your mouth then, and only then, you will appreciate its rare aroma and fragmented, crushed particles will once again unite in your consciousness and find the beauty of the whole, to which you have mixed a little of your own blood.