In this article, strategies and writing tricks (the trick of “defamiliarization”, imagery) which in Nabokov’s short story A Guide to Berlin serve to design the image of the city and simultaneously to explore the world of values (axiological map of Berlin/Eden) are being interpreted. The author of this article proves that the semantics of the title guide is connected with the strategy of transition from empirical observation and one “fragment of space” to expression of a situation in which the subject of speech has found himself. Moreover, it is shown that the subjectivity of the observer, his way of experiencing the world and his creative sensitivity seem crucial in the story, because he evaluates the surrounding reality and in the “act of individual creativity” builds upon it yet another space – an unusual, transformed one, close to the emigrant/the author of the guidebook. Attention is also paid to the differentiation of two ways of perceiving the world and two types of consciousness: the artist’s/narrator’s and his listener’s (“average consciousness”).

This article deals with the issue of the means of conveying ethical reflection in mass literature. The material under analysis are Guzel Yakhina’s bestselling novels Zuleikha Opens her Eyes and My Children. The author concentrates on the motifs which express oddity and strangeness observed among the descriptions of the protagonists, events and situations. Considered also is oddity on the level of narrative which seems to be very similar to the artistic technique of defamiliarization. Analyses show that through contrast the discussed motives are in Yakhina’s novels strictly connected with commitment to others and also a responsibility for them. This connection broadens the horizons of ethics in popular and mass literature and opens up the perspective of ethical reading.