The first volume of Nabokov's early novels includes "Maschenka," written in 1925/26, which is Nabokov's debut novel, and his second novel "King, Queen, Knave," completed in 1928. Both were originally written in Russian. In "Maschenka," later readers saw the echo of a youthful love of Nabokov's, the "Tamara" from "Speak, Memory," but his first Berlin readers did not perceive the novel as autobiographical, rather as a description of exile. In "King, Queen, Knave," the two main characters have hardly any kind of memory. They plan a murder and fail because they are no longer able to interpret correctly what is happening around them and become lost in the future.