Nabokov's final Berlin novel is a dire warning not only to his contemporaries but also to posterity. Nabokov began writing this novel in 1934. In Germany, where the writer was living at the time, power was in the hands of Adolf Hitler's National Socialist German Workers' Party. A dark shadow was slowly descending upon the country. The merciless absurdity of events, the pogroms, and the anti-humanist rhetoric—all of this is reflected in the novel, where, despite the strangeness and sometimes comical nature of the events, the inevitable approach of a bloody denouement seems absolutely real and is perceived as a dire warning—a warning that, unfortunately, turned out to be prophetic. While at the time of the novel's publication, critics agreed on its stylistic perfection, their views differed on the question of its ideological component and even the very structure of the text. However, even those who considered the text excessively grotesque soon changed their minds and began to talk about its absolutely accurate reflection of the era. The madness of life once again surpassed literary absurdity, and first Germany, then Europe, and then the entire world received its invitation to execution.