This paper analyses the function of colours in Vladimir Nabokov's novels with reference to his self-described colour alphabet, and uses it to identify a shift in his perception of colours in English and Russian, respectively. In this way, we observe the corpus of Nabokov’s novels through the prism of his private perception of how colours and written language relate to each other on both the statistical and semantic levels. It is well known that Nabokov had synaesthesia, a genetic condition, inherited from his mother, that compels the person to experience more than one sense simultaneously. We hypothesise that Nabokov's synaesthesia influenced his writing. In his autobiographical work Conclusive Evidence and the Russian and English editions of its revised version, Speak, Memory, he describes his synaesthesia in great detail, including the colour each letter of the alphabet evokes in his mind. Nabokov details his respective ‘colour’ alphabets in both English and Russian. The letters in different languages, he observes, produce somewhat different shades; the differences between the two alphabets and these elements of interference present a starting point for an analysis of Nabokov’s oeuvre with a focus on his use of colours. We use his descriptions of his synaesthesia in both manuscript drafts and in three published versions of this passage to analyse and visualise the letter and consequently colour distributions across his bilingual oeuvre. A close analysis of the evolution of Nabokov’s epithets that describe colour in both languages and of the relationship between colour epithets and other words in his novels complement this comprehensive analysis of the way Nabokov’s synaesthesia informs his work and his bilingualism. First, we calculate the relative frequencies of letters and the distribution of colours they represent, and compare the results with a reference corpus of English and Russian literature. Given the often vague and idiosyncratic nature of Nabokov’s colour descriptions—where he frequently avoids conventional terms—we experiment with generative AI to visualise the colours he describes in Russian and English, offering a novel way to interpret his synaesthetic experiences. This allows us to effectively colour-map his works in ways that reveal how his perception of language is intertwined with visual imagery. Statistical analyses of the letter frequencies in Nabokov’s novels show that their colour topographies differ measurably from chapter to chapter. This adds a new dimension to reading his work through uncovering the layers of meaning tied to his synaesthetic interpretations. By using a range of computational methods, we then analyse a broader segment of Nabokov’s oeuvre, allowing us to identify patterns and trends in his use of colour across different works and languages. This analysis not only broadens our perspective but also subsequently highlights specific passages that warrant closer examination. In addition, we offer a broader analysis of the importance of colour in Nabokov’s oeuvre. First, we build on the differences in Nabokov’s synaesthetic perception in his respective languages to examine the relationship between his use of colours and his bilingualism. Psycholinguistic research suggests that colour perception can vary significantly among speakers of different languages. Considering existing research on colour perception between speakers of the languages Nabokov was fluent in (Russian, English, French and German) and bilingual speakers, we trace how the distribution of colour changes not only between his English and Russian works but also across time. In the last step of our analysis, we employ an original digital tool, LitTerra, to graphically visualise each novel’s vocabulary. This method of textual analysis is based on an original method of visualisation of individual words in a literary text as a network (we call this component Society of Words). Just like in actual reading, Society of Words gives us the ability to focus on thematic or grammatical aspects of the novel that interest us the most, such as literary characters, thematic clusters, parts of speech etc. and on the relationships between individual nodes. In each case, the network allows us to see which words are associated – forming a series throughout the work – with the given node representing, say, Humbert Humbert in “Lolita” and a given semantic group of words (in our case, colours) or a part of speech (in our case, adjectives). The basic connection represents the pattern whereby two words occur in close proximity of each other repeatedly throughout the text. In this way, we can model the ways in which words and concepts can be associated one with another in tangible ways that affect interpretation. This added perspective allows us to analyse, building on the first two stages of this research, how the use of different colours by Nabokov relates to characters and themes in his novels. Finally, we use LitTerra to complement this multifaceted computational analysis with close readings of relevant passages. LitTerra integrates, among its other functions, stylometric analysis and its visualisation with close reading and machine alignment of multiple texts in different languages, enabling parallel comparative analysis. Integrating the different stages of our analysis within an overarching framework, we can seamlessly access the passages where colour epithets are identified by computational methods as particularly significant, either in semantic terms or in relation to Nabokov’s synaesthesia or bilingualism. This allows us to augment our findings with a semantic analysis of the use of colour in Nabokov’s bilingual fiction. In this way, distant reading and close reading approaches are used in a complementary fashion to create a comprehensive overview of how a semantic category that is especially important to the writer unfolds in his work in relation to different characters and topics. This research adds to the study of Nabokov, of bilingual literature and of stylometry, presents a synthetic approach to computational literary analysis and, finally, opens up a window onto ways in which literature can be affected and informed by cognitive and psycholinguistics factors