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Ivan Alekseevich Bunin - Winner of a Nobel prize for literature in 1933, this character is a poet and writer trying to engage and befriend Nabokov in Paris in the 1930s. However, he attains only superficial success.

Colette - This is the adult pseudonym of Claude Deprès.

Claude Deprès - This character is the nine-year-old girl with whom the ten-year-old Nabokov falls in love while on summer holiday at Biarritz, France, in 1909. The image of this character "prefigures and clearly inspires Lolita," the character in the novel of the same name that made Nabokov a celebrity.

Mstislav Valerianovich Dobuzhinski - This character is a painter and art tutor during the period just prior to World War I. Nabokov credits this character with teaching him the basics of memory- based artwork, reinforcing his visual sense and retention of detail in his mind's eye.

General Aleksey Nokolaevich...

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