An extraordinary collection of Nabokov's little-known published material from across his life - from student essays to his last interviews
Vladimir Nabokov (1899-1977), born in St Petersburg, exiled in
Cambridge, Berlin, and Paris, became the greatest Russian writer of
the first half of the twentieth century. Fleeing to the US with his
family in 1940, he then became the greatest writer in English of
the second half of the century, and even 'God's own novelist'
(William Deresiewicz). He lived in Europe from 1959 onwards, and
died in Montreux, Switzerland. All his major works - novels,
stories, an autobiography, poems, plays, lectures, essays and
reviews - are published in Penguin Modern Classics.
Brian Boyd, University Distinguished Professor of English,
University of Auckland, has long been associated with the work of
Vladimir Nabokov, as annotator, bibliographer, biographer, critic,
editor, translator and more. His works have appeared in nineteen
languages and won awards on four continents.
Anastasia Tolstoy, a junior Research Fellow at Wolfson College,
University of Oxford, holds a doctorate from Oxford, where she
completed a DPhil on Vladimir Nabokov and the Aesthetics of
Disgust. She is the co-translator, with Thomas Karshan, of
Nabokov's neo-Shakespearean blank verse drama The Tragedy of Mister
Morn.
For those of us who are Vladimir Nabokov completists perhaps we
finally have closure ... Now we have the full Nabokovian ex
cathedra pronouncements in all their typical vim and vigour.
*Times Literary Supplement*
Masterly, hilarious, truly insightful ... Vladimir Nabokov's views
are of compelling interest - paradoxically, because he regularly
insisted that his novels sent no message, made no moral case and
presented no argument ... His non-fiction stands up astonishingly
well.
*The Spectator*
A rich treat for Nabokov's admirers.
*Kirkus*
The writer's genius for nailing a subject in a sentence lives on in
his stinging reviews and defensive interviews.
*Financial Times*
A fuller, and maybe truer, image of Nabokov ... The greatest
pleasure in reading this book is the impression you get that you're
opening your presents underneath the Christmas tree ... A lovely
blend of literary elements and of personal details pertaining to
Nabokov: you experience intellectual marvel when you detect the
premises of a famous quote or a literary pattern, and you feel
particular pleasure when you get a glimpse of the man hiding behind
the famous writer and becoming suddenly relatable.
*Transatlantica*
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