What is the name of the protagonist in Vladimir Nabokov's Russian-language novel 'The Gift'?

The protagonist of Vladimir Nabokov’s Russian-language novel The Gift is Fyodor Godunov-Cherdyntsev. He is a young Russian émigré writer living in Berlin after his family fled the Bolshevik Revolution.

Fyodor’s artistic ambitions, memories of pre-revolutionary Russia, and relationship with Zina Mertz shape the novel. He is both a character and a developing writer, and the book repeatedly blurs the boundary between lived experience and literary creation. His father, an explorer who disappeared during an expedition, also becomes an important presence in his imagination.

The Gift was Nabokov’s final novel written in Russian. It was serialized in the émigré journal Sovremennye zapiski in 1938, with its controversial fourth chapter initially omitted; the complete novel appeared in 1952. John Shade is the poet-narrator of Pale Fire, Timofey Pnin is the central character of Pnin, and Humbert Humbert narrates Lolita, so all three are Nabokov characters but not Fyodor’s identity.