Mary is a gripping tale of youth, first love, and nostalgia - Nabokov"s first novel. In a Berlin rooming house filled with an assort­ment of serio-comic Russian emigres, Lev Ganin, a vigorous young officer posed between his past and his future, relives his first love affair. His memories of Mary are suffused with the freshness of youth and the idyllic ambience of prerevolutionary Russia. In stark contrast is the decidedly unappealing boarder living in the room next to Ganin"s, who, he discovers, is Mary"s husband, temporarily separated from her by the revolution but expecting her immi­nent arrival from Russia.