But like Mary McCarthy's splendid review of Pale Fire, this kind of fanfare is too recent to account for his reputation, which has grown quietly for a decade among a new generation of serious readers ...

In 1925 in Berlin, Vladimir Nabokov participated in a literary evening for Russian émigrés living in the German capital; the topic of his talk was a recent boxing match he attended at the Berlin ...

Vladimir Nabokov once said, “A writer should have the precision of a poet and the imagination of a scientist.” The famed author exhibited both equally in his writing and in his non-literary pursuits, ...

At the age of thirty-one, living as a penniless exile in Berlin, Vladimir Nabokov composed, in Russian, a novel called "Camera Obscura," which he published serially in an émigré journal in 1930. Five ...

Vera (Mrs Vladimir Nabokov) Stacy Schiff Picador £25, pp456 During recent Nabokov centennial celebrations, mandarin passions and academic pedantry, notably north American, ran riot. Acolytes and ...

Nabokov’s controversial 1955 novel was repeatedly rejected by American publishers: “We would all go to jail if the thing were published,” one editor said after reading it. 6. The novel is a love ...

A detailed wing schematic. Vladimir Nabokov. Courtesy of the Vladimir Nabokov Archive at the Berg Collection, New York Public Library, used by permission of The Wylie Agency LLC. Detailed renderings ...

Color Plate 43, Nabokov’s rendering of Japanese Blues, with rendering (at upper right) of cleobis Bremer 1861, for comparative purposes (© Vladimir Nabokov, courtesy of the Vladimir Nabokov Archive at ...

Several years ago, I stumbled upon what happened to Sally Horner, the 11-year-old girl whose kidnapping helped inspire Vladimir Nabokov's classic and infamous 1955 novel Lolita, while looking for my ...

I’ve rarely come across a book as entertaining as this one, or as hugely sad. In The Feud, Alex Beam walks us with good sense through one of the great literary quarrels of the 20 th century. Its ...