In the current printing of this work, sixteen stories not previously published in English are translated by the author's son, Dmitri Nabokov.

Nabokov's first collection of short stories, Nabokov's Dozen, contained thirteen total stories, which made for the structure of all of his subsequent collections, four in his lifetime.

[1] The stories are presented in as close to chronological order as they were able to piece together.

[1] Three additional stories were discovered and translated after the first printing of this collection.

[2] The eighth part of the story "The Potato Elf" was accidentally omitted from the first five printings of the hardcover edition of this book.