Vyacheslav Kuritsyn

"Kuritsyn's "Happiness" is a small book that reveals much about Russian life in Berlin (then and now): about the qualities of passion, the nature of literary talent, and the debris from which this gift (one could also say "The Gift") emerges. The book is completely non-committal, like the story it tells, and yet it seems illuminated by a ray of sunshine that conveys to the reader the blissful experience suggested by the title. The details suddenly become a kind of telescope through which one can see far in all directions."
KINOPOISK

"Kuritsyn, a lover of curiosities and a master of the poetics of curiosities, remains true to himself in this book again. On the one hand, he has a brilliant command of the material, and his meticulous attention misses no detail, no matter how small, of the writer's biography, no subtle passages in Nabokov's letters and texts, and much more, which Kuritsyn sometimes reconstructs intuitively, yet one trusts this reconstruction. On the other hand, Kuritsyn plays with the text, creating collages of texts and visual artifacts, deliberately chatting about trivialities (a triviality, when magnified by a researcher's attention, can sometimes reveal more about a character than he himself can in a monologue), graphically highlighting certain fragments, and finally simply adding his own humorous drawings to the book. All this brings the classic to life without diminishing its literary status. Why not show a living Nabokov—young and happy?"
ZNAMYA