Everything about Vladimir Nabokov totally explained
» This page is about the novelist. For his father, the politician, see Vladimir Dmitrievich Nabokov.
Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov () (
Saint Petersburg –
July 2,
1977,
Montreux) was a
multilingual Russian-
American novelist and
short story writer.
Nabokov wrote his first nine novels in
Russian, then rose to international prominence as a master
English prose stylist. He also made significant contributions to
entomology and had an interest in
chess problems.
Nabokov's
Lolita (1955) is frequently cited as his most important novel, and is his most widely known, exhibiting the love of intricate
wordplay and descriptive detail that characterized all his works..
Biography
Russia
The eldest son of
Vladimir Dmitrievich Nabokov and his wife, née Elena Ivanovna Rukavishnikova, he was born to a rich and prominent
Orthodox family of the untitled nobility of
Saint Petersburg. He spent his childhood and youth there and at the country estate
Vyra near
Siverskaya. Nabokov's childhood, which he called "perfect," was remarkable in several ways. The family spoke Russian, English and
French in their household, and Nabokov was trilingual from an early age. In fact, much to his father's patriotic chagrin, Nabokov could read and write English before he could Russian. In
Speak, Memory Nabokov recalls numerous details of his privileged childhood, and his ability to recall in vivid detail memories of his past was a boon to him during his permanent exile, as well as providing a theme which echoes from his first book,
Mary, all the way to later works such as . In 1916 Nabokov inherited the estate Rozhestveno, next to Vyra, from his uncle Vasiliy Ivanovich Rukavishnikov ("Uncle Ruka" in
Speak, Memory), but lost it in the revolution one year later; this was the only house he'd ever own.
Emigration
The Nabokov family left Saint Petersburg in the wake of the 1917
Revolution for a friend's estate in the
Crimea, where they remained for 18 months. The family didn't expect to be out of Saint Petersburg for very long, but in fact they'd never return. In September of 1918, they moved to
Livadia. After the withdrawal of the German Army (November 1918) and following the defeat of the
White Army in early 1919, the Nabokovs left for exile in western Europe. On April 2, 1919, the family left Sevastopol. They settled briefly in England, where Vladimir enrolled in
Trinity College,
Cambridge and studied
Slavic and
Romance languages. His Cambridge experiences would later help him in the writing of the novel
Glory. In 1920, his family moved to Berlin where his father set up the émigré newspaper Rul'. VN would follow to Berlin after his studies at Cambridge two years later.
In 1922, Nabokov's father was assassinated in Berlin by Russian monarchists as he tried to shelter their real target,
Pavel Milyukov, a leader of the Constitutional Democratic Party-in-exile. This episode of mistaken, violent death would echo again and again in the author's fiction, where characters would meet their deaths under mistaken terms. In
Pale Fire, for example, the poet Shade is murdered accidentally when an assassin fires his weapon at a former king. Shortly after his father's death, his mother and sister moved to Prague. VN, however, stayed in Berlin where he became a recognized poet and writer within the émigré community and published under his pen name
V. Sirin - it may signify an owl or a
mythological bird -, a pseudonym he used for his Russian writings for about four decades. In Berlin, he also tutored and gave tennis lessons.
In 1922 Nabokov became engaged to Svetlana Siewert; the engagement was broken off in early 1923 as he'd no steady job. In May 1923, he met
Véra Evseyevna Slonim and married her in 1925. Their only child,
Dmitri, was born in 1934.
In 1936, when Vera lost her job due to the antisemitic environment, and the assassin of his father was appointed second-in-command of the Russian émigré group, Nabokov started to look for jobs in the English-speaking world. He left Germany with his family in 1937. He and his family moved to
Paris, but also stayed during this journey at times at Prague, Cannes, Menton, Cap d'Antibes, and Frejus. In May 1940 the Nabokov family fled from the advancing German troops to the United States on board the
Champlain.
America
The Nabokovs settled down in Manhattan and VN started a job at the
American Museum of Natural History. In October he met
Edmund Wilson, who introduced Nabokov's work to American editors, leading eventually to his recognition.
Nabokov came to
Wellesley College in 1941 as resident lecturer in comparative literature. The position, created specifically for him, provided an income and free time to write creatively and pursue his
lepidoptery. Nabokov is remembered as the founder of Wellesley's Russian Department. His lecture series on major nineteenth-century Russian writers was hailed as "funny," "learned," and "brilliantly satirical." The Nabokovs resided in Wellesley, Massachusetts during the 1941-42 academic year; they moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts in September 1942 and lived there until June 1948. Following a lecture tour through the United States, Nabokov returned to Wellesley for the 1944–45 academic year as a lecturer in Russian. He served through the 1947-48 term as Wellesley's one-man Russian Department, offering courses in Russian language and literature. His classes were popular, due as much to his unique teaching style as to the wartime interest in all things Russian. At the same time he was curator of
lepidoptery at
Harvard's Museum of Comparative Biology. After being encouraged by
Morris Bishop, Nabokov left Wellesley in 1948 to teach Russian and European literature at
Cornell University. In 1945, he became a
naturalized citizen of the United States.
Nabokov wrote his novel
Lolita while traveling on butterfly-collection trips in the
western United States. (Nabokov never learned to drive, Vera acted as chauffeur; when VN attempted to burn unfinished drafts of Lolita, it was Vera who stopped him. He called her the best-humored woman he'd ever known. Despite this, biographers - in particular, Stacy Shiff - have made it clear that he regularly strayed in his marriage.) In June 1953 he and his family came to
Ashland, Oregon, renting a house on Meade Street from Professor Taylor, head of the
Southern Oregon College Department of Social Science. There he finished
Lolita and began writing the novel
Pnin. He roamed the nearby mountains looking for butterflies, and wrote a poem
Lines Written in Oregon. On
October 1,
1953, he and his family left for
Ithaca, New York.
Montreux
After the great financial success of
Lolita, Nabokov was able to return to Europe and devote himself exclusively to writing. Also his son had gotten a position as an operatic bass at
Reggio Emilia. On October 1, 1961, he and Véra moved to the Montreux Palace Hotel in
Montreux,
Switzerland; he stayed there until the end of his life. From his sixth-floor quarters he conducted his business and took tours to the Alps, Corsica, and Sicily to hunt butterflies. In 1976 he was hospitalized with an undiagnosed fever; rehospitalized in Lausanne in 1977, he suffered from severe bronchial congestion, and died on July 2. His remains were cremated and are buried at the Clarens cemetery in
Montreux.
At the time of his death, he was working on a novel titled
The Original of Laura. His wife Vera and son Dmitri were entrusted with Nabokov's
literary executorship, and though he asked them to burn the manuscript, they were unable to destroy his final work. The incomplete manuscript, which is said to consist of around 125 handwritten index cards, has remained in a Swiss bank vault ever since. Only two people, Dmitri Nabokov and an unknown person, have access to the vault. Portions of the manuscript have been shown to Nabokov scholars. In April, 2008, Dmitri announced that he'd publish the novel.
Birth date
Nabokov was born on
April 10 1899 according to the
Julian calendar in use in Russia at that time. The
Gregorian equivalent is
April 22, which is achieved by adding 12 days to the Julian date. Some sources have incorrectly calculated a date of
April 23, by inappropriately using the 13-day difference in the calendars that applied only after
February 28 1900. In
Speak, Memory Nabokov explains the cause of the error and confirms the correct date of
April 22. But he himself celebrated his birthday on April 23, and stated in an interview with
The New York Times, "That is also Shakespeare’s and Shirley Temple’s, so I've nothing to lose by saying I was born on the 23rd."
Work
Nabokov's first writings were in Russian, but he came to his greatest distinction in the English language. For this achievement, he's been compared with
Joseph Conrad; yet some view this as a dubious comparison, as Conrad composed only in English, never in his native Polish. (Nabokov himself disdained the comparison for
aesthetic reasons, lamenting to the critic Edmund Wilson, "I am too old to change Conradically" — which John Updike later called, "itself a jest of genius." Nabokov, in the very early fifties, offered the critic Edmund Wilson a pocket appraisal: "Conrad knew how to handle readymade English better than I; but I know better the other kind. He never sinks to the depths of my solecisms, but neither does he scale my verbal peaks.") Nabokov translated many of his own early works into English, sometimes in cooperation with his son Dmitri. His trilingual upbringing had a profound influence on his artistry. He has metaphorically described the transition from one language to another as the slow journey at night from one village to the next with only a candle for illumination. Nabokov himself translated two books he wrote in English into Russian,
Conclusive Evidence, and
Lolita. The first "translation" was made because of Nabokov's feeling of imperfection in the English version. Writing the book, he noted that he needed to translate his own memories into English, and to spend a lot of time explaining things which are well-known in Russia; then he decided to re-write the book once again, in his first native language, and after that he made the final version,
Speak, Memory (Nabokov first wanted to name it "Speak,
Mnemosyne"). Nabokov was a proponent of
individualism, and rejected concepts and ideologies that curtailed individual freedom and expression, such as
totalitarianism in its various forms as well as
Freud's
psychoanalysis.
Poshlost, or as he transcribed it,
poshlust, is disdained and frequently mocked in his works.
Nabokov is noted for his complex plots, clever word play, and use of
alliteration. He gained both fame and notoriety with his novel
Lolita (1955), which tells of a grown man's devouring passion for a twelve-year-old girl. This and his other novels, particularly
Pale Fire (1962), won him a place among the greatest novelists of the 20th century. His longest novel, which met with a mixed response, is (1969). He devoted more time to the composition of this novel than any of his others. Nabokov's fiction is characterized by its linguistic playfulness. For example, his short story "
The Vane Sisters" is famous in part for its
acrostic final paragraph, in which the first letters of each word spell out a message from beyond the grave.
Nabokov's stature as a literary critic is founded largely on his four-volume
translation of and commentary on
Aleksandr Pushkin's epic of the Russian soul,
Eugene Onegin, published in 1964. That commentary ended with an appendix titled
Notes on Prosody which has developed a reputation of its own. It stemmed from his observation that while Pushkin's
iambic
tetrameters had been a part of
Russian literature for a fairly short two centuries, they were clearly understood by the Russian prosodists. On the other hand, he viewed the much older English
iambic tetrameters as muddled and poorly documented. In his own words:
» I've been forced to invent a simple little terminology of my own, explain its application to English verse forms, and indulge in certain rather copious details of classification before even tackling the limited object of these notes to my translation of Pushkin's
Eugene Onegin, an object that boils down to very little—in comparison to the forced preliminaries — namely, to a few things that the non-Russian student of Russian literature must know in regard to Russian prosody in general and to
Eugene Onegin in particular.
Nabokov's translation was the focus of a bitter polemic with
Edmund Wilson and others; he'd rendered the very precisely metered and rhyming novel in verse to (by his own admission) stumbling, non-rhymed prose. He argued that all verse translations of
Onegin fatally betrayed the author's use of language; critics replied that failure to make the translation as beautifully styled as the original was a much greater betrayal.
Nabokov's
Lectures on Literature at Cornell University where he was appointed an instructor in 1948, reveals his controversial ideas concerning art. He firmly believed that novels shouldn't aim to teach and that readers shouldn't merely empathise with characters but that a 'higher' aesthetic enjoyment should be attained, partly by paying great attention to details of style and structure. He detested what he saw as 'general ideas' in novels, and so when teaching
Ulysses, for example, he'd insist students keep an eye on where the characters were in Dublin (with the aid of a map) rather than teaching the complex Irish history that many critics see as being essential to an understanding of the novel.
During his ten years at Cornell, Nabokov introduced undergraduates to the delights of great fiction, including the
Bleak House of
Charles Dickens in fifty-minute classroom lectures .
Nabokov's detractors fault him for being an aesthete and for his over-attention to language and detail rather than character development. In his essay "Nabokov, or Nostalgia,"
Danilo Kiš wrote that Nabokov's is "a magnificent, complex, and sterile art." Russian poet Yvgeny Yevtushenko said in a Playboy interview that he could hear the clatter of surgical tools in VN's prose.
Not until
glasnost did Nabokov's work become officially available in his native country.
Gorbachev authorized a five-volume edition of his writing in 1988.
Nabokov's synesthesia
Nabokov was a
synesthete and described aspects of synesthesia in several of his works. In his memoir
Speak, Memory, he notes that his wife also exhibited synesthesia; like her husband, her mind's eye associated colors with particular letters. They discovered that Dmitri shared the trait, and moreover that the colors he associated with some letters were in some cases blends of his parents' hues—"which is as if
genes were painting in
aquarelle".
Vladimir Nabokov's case of
synesthesia can be described in more detail than merely the association of colors with particular letters. For a synesthete letters are not simply associated with certain colors; they
are colored. Nabokov frequently endowed his protagonists with a similar gift. In
Bend Sinister Krug comments on his perception of the word "loyalty" as being like a golden fork lying out in the sun. In
The Defense, Nabokov mentioned briefly how the main character's father, a writer, found he was unable to complete a novel that he planned to write, becoming lost in the fabricated storyline by "starting with colors." Many other subtle references are made in Nabokov's writing that can be traced back to his synesthesia. Many of his characters have a distinct "sensory appetite" reminiscent of synesthesia.
Entomology
His career as an
entomologist was equally distinguished. Throughout an extensive career of collecting he never learned to drive a car, and he depended on his wife Véra to take him to collecting sites. During the 1940s, as a research fellow in
zoology, he was responsible for organizing the butterfly collection of the Museum of Comparative Zoology at
Harvard University. His writings in this area were highly technical. This, combined with his specialty in the relatively unspectacular tribe
Polyommatini of the family
Lycaenidae, has left this facet of his life little explored by most admirers of his literary works. He identified the
Karner Blue. The
genus Nabokovia was named after him in honor of this work, as were a number of butterfly and moth
species (for example many of the genera
Madeleinea and
Pseudolucia).
The paleontologist and essayist
Stephen Jay Gould discussed Nabokov's lepidoptery in an essay reprinted in his book
I Have Landed. Gould notes that Nabokov was occasionally a scientific "stick-in-the-mud"; for example, Nabokov never accepted that
genetics or the counting of
chromosomes could be a valid way to distinguish species of insects, and relied on the traditional (for lepidopterists) microscopic comparison of their
genitalia. The
Harvard Museum of Natural History, which now contains the Museum of Comparative Zoology, still possesses Nabokov's "genitalia cabinet", where the author stored his collection of male blue butterfly genitalia.
(External Link
),
(External Link) "Nabokov was a serious taxonomist," according to the museum staff writer
Nancy Pick, author of . "He actually did quite a good job at distinguishing species that you wouldn't think were different—by looking at their genitalia under a microscope six hours a day, seven days a week, until his eyesight was permanently impaired."
(External Link)
Many of Nabokov's fans have tried to ascribe literary value to his scientific papers, Gould notes. Conversely, others have claimed that his scientific work enriched his literary output. Gould advocates a third view, holding that the other two positions are examples of the
post hoc ergo propter hoc logical fallacy. Rather than assuming that either side of Nabokov's work caused or stimulated the other, Gould proposes that
both stemmed from Nabokov's love of detail, contemplation and symmetry.
Chess problems
Nabokov spent considerable time during his exile on the composition of
chess problems. Such compositions he published in the Russian émigré press,
Poems and Problems (18 chess compositions) and
Speak, Memory (1 problem). He describes the process of composing and constructing in his memoir: "The strain on the mind is formidable; the element of time drops out of one consciousness..." To him, the "originality, invention, conciseness, harmony, complexity, and splendid insincerity" of creating a chess problem was similar to that in any other art.
Influence
The critic
James Wood argued that Nabokov's use of descriptive detail proved an "overpowering, and not always very fruitful, influence on two or three generations after him", including authors such as
Martin Amis and
John Updike. While a student at Cornell in the 1950s,
Thomas Pynchon attended several of Nabokov's lectures; Pynchon later referred to
Lolita in his novel
The Crying of Lot 49 (1966), and may have been influenced by Nabokov's preference for
actualism over realism. Of the authors who came to prominence during Nabokov's lifetime,
John Banville,
Don DeLillo,
Salman Rushdie, and
Edmund White were all influenced by Nabokov.
Several authors who came to prominence in the 1990s and 2000s have also cited Nabokov's work as a literary influence.
Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist
Michael Chabon listed
Lolita and
Pale Fire among the "books that, I thought, changed my life when I read them," and stated that "Nabokov's English combines aching lyricism with dispassionate precision in a way that seems to render every human emotion in all its intensity but never with an ounce of schmaltz or soggy language". Pulitzer Prize winner
Jeffrey Eugenides said that "Nabokov has always been and remains one of my favorite writers. He’s able to juggle ten balls where most people can juggle three or four."
T. Coraghessan Boyle said that "Nabokov's playfulness and the ravishing beauty of his prose are ongoing influences" on his writing, and
Jhumpa Lahiri,
Marisha Pessl, and
Zadie Smith have also acknowledged Nabokov's influence.
List of works
Fiction
Novels and novellas
Novels and novellas written in Russian
- (1926) Mashen'ka (Машенька); English translation: Mary (1970)
- (1928) Korol' Dama Valet (Король, дама, валет); English translation: King, Queen, Knave (1968)
- (1930) Zashchita Luzhina (Защита Лужина); English translation: The Luzhin Defense or The Defense (1964) (also adapted to film, The Luzhin Defence, in 2001)
- (1930) Sogliadatai (Соглядатай (Eavesdropper)), novella; first publication as a book 1938; English translation: The Eye (1965)
- (1932) Podvig (Подвиг (Deed)); English translation: Glory (1971)
- (1933) Kamera Obskura (Камера Обскура); English translations: Camera Obscura (1936), Laughter in the Dark (1938)
- (1934) Otchayanie (Отчаяние); English translation: Despair (1937, 1966)
- (1936) Priglasheniye na kazn' (Приглашение на казнь (Invitation to an execution)); English translation: Invitation to a Beheading (1959)
- (1938) Dar (Дар); English translation: The Gift (1963)
- (Unpublished novella, written in 1939) Volshebnik (Волшебник); English translation: The Enchanter (1985)
Novels written in English
(1941) The Real Life of Sebastian Knight
(1947) Bend Sinister
(1955) Lolita, self-translated into Russian, (1965)
(1957) Pnin
(1962) Pale Fire
(1969)
(1972) Transparent Things
(1974) Look at the Harlequins!
(1977) The Original of Laura (Unfinished/Unpublished)
Short story collections
(1930) Vozvrashchenie Chorba ("The Return of Chorb"). Fifteen short stories and twenty-four poems, in Russian, by "V. Sirin".
(1938) Sogliadatai ("The Eye"). Thirteen short stories, in Russian, by "V. Sirin".
(1947) Nine Stories
(1956) Vesna v Fial'te i drugie rasskazy ("Spring in Fialta and other stories")
(1958) Nabokov's Dozen: A Collection of Thirteen Stories (Also reprinted as Spring in Fialta and First Love and Other Stories.)
(1966) Nabokov's Quartet
(1968) Nabokov's Congeries; reprinted as The Portable Nabokov (1971)
(1973) A Russian Beauty and Other Stories
(1975) Tyrants Destroyed and Other Stories
(1976) Details of a Sunset and Other Stories
(1995) The Stories of Vladimir Nabokov (alternative title The Collected Stories) -- complete collection of all short stories
(2005) Cloud, Castle, Lake
Drama
(1938) Izobretenie Val'sa (The Waltz Invention); English translation The Waltz Invention: A Play in Three Acts (1966)
(1974) (Despite the credits given in the earlier film version, this wasn't used.)
(1984) The Man from the USSR and Other Plays
Poetry
(1916) Stikhi ("Poems"). Sixty-eight poems in Russian.
(1918) Al'manakh: Dva Puti (An Almanac: Two Paths"). Twelve poems by Nabokov and eight by Andrei Balashov, in Russian.
(1922) Grozd ("The Cluster"). Thirty-six poems in Russian, by "V. Sirin".
(1923) Gornii Put' ("The Empyrean Path"). One hundred and twenty-eight poems in Russian, by "Vl. Sirin".
(1929) Vozvrashchenie Chorba ("The Return of Chorb"). Fifteen short stories and twenty-four poems, in Russian, by "V. Sirin".
(1952) Stikhotvoreniia 1929–1951 ("Poems 1929–1951") Fifteen poems in Russian.
(1959) Poems. The contents were later incorporated within Poems and Problems.
(1969) Poems and Problems (a collection of poetry and chess problems) ISBN 0-07-045724-7
(1979) Stikhi ("Poems"). Two hundred and twenty-two poems in Russian.
Translations
From French into Russian
(1922) Nikolka Persik Translation of Romain Rolland's novel Colas Breugnon.
From English into Russian
(1923) Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (as Аня в сtране чудес - Anya in Wonderland)
From Russian into English
(1945) Three Russian Poets: Selections from Pushkin, Lermontov, and Tyutchev. Expanded British edition: Pushkin, Lermontov, Tyutchev: Poems (1947)
(1958) A Hero of Our Time, by Mikhail Lermontov. (Collaboration with his son Dmitri.)
(1960) The Song of Igor's Campaign: An Epic of the Twelfth Century
(1964) Eugene Onegin, by Aleksandr Pushkin, in prose. Includes "Notes on Prosody". Revised edition (1975).
Nonfiction
Criticism
(1944) Nikolai Gogol
(1963) Notes on Prosody (Later appeared within Eugene Onegin.)
(1980) Lectures on Literature
(1980) Lectures on Ulysses. Facsimiles of Nabokov's notes.
(1981) Lectures on Russian Literature
(1983) Lectures on Don Quixote
Autobiographical and other
(1951) Conclusive Evidence: A Memoir - first version of Nabokov's autobiography. (British edition titled Speak, Memory: A Memoir)
(1954) Drugie Berega (Другие берега, "Other Shores") - revised version of the autobiography
(1967) Speak, Memory: An Autobiography Revisited - final revised and extended edition of Conclusive Evidence. It includes information on his work as a lepidopterist.
(1973) Strong Opinions. Interviews, reviews, letters to editors.
(1979) The Nabokov–Wilson Letters Letters between Nabokov and Edmund Wilson
(1984) Perepiska s Sestroi (Переписка с Сестрой (Correspondence with the Sister)) Correspondence between Nabokov and Helene Sikorski; also includes some letters to his brother Kirill
(1987) Carrousel. Three long-forgotten short texts that had recently been rediscovered.
(1989) Selected Letters
(2001) Dear Bunny, Dear Volodya: The Nabokov–Wilson Letters, 1940–1971. A revised and augmented edition of The Nabokov–Wilson Letters.
Lepidoptery
(2000) Nabokov's Butterflies, collected works on butterflies. ISBN 0-8070-8540-5
Collected Works
Boyd, Brian, ed. Vladimir Nabokov, Novels and Memoirs 1943-1951 (Library of America, 1996) ISBN 978-1-88301118-5
Boyd, Brian, ed. Vladimir Nabokov, Novels 1955-1962 (Library of America, 1996) ISBN 978-1-88301119-2
Boyd, Brian, ed. Vladimir Nabokov, Novels 1969-1974 (Library of America, 1996) ISBN 978-1-88301120-8
Works about Nabokov
Biography
Boyd, Brian. Vladimir Nabokov: The Russian years. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1990. ISBN 0-691-06794-5 (hardback) 1997. ISBN 0-691-02470-7 (paperback). London: Chatto & Windus, 1990. ISBN 0-7011-3700-2 (hardback)
Boyd, Brian, Vladimir Nabokov: The American years. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1991. ISBN 0-691-06797-X (hardback) 1993. 0-691-02471-5 (paperback). London: Chatto & Windus, 1992. ISBN 0-7011-3701-0 (hardback)
Field, Andrew. VN The Life and Art of Vladimir Nabokov. New York: Crown Publishers. 1986. ISNB 0-517-56113-1
Proffer, Elendea, ed. Vladimir Nabokov: A pictorial biography. Ann Arbor, Mich.: Ardis, 1991. ISBN 0-87501-078-4 (a collection of photographs)
Schiff, Stacy. Véra (Mrs. Vladimir Nabokov). New York, NY.: Random House, 1999. ISBN 0-679-44790-3.
Bibliography
Vladimir E. Alexandrov (editor), The Garland Companion to Vladimir Nabokov, New York, Garland Publishing, 1995. ISNB 0-8153-0354-8.
Michael Juliar, Vladimir Nabokov: A Descriptive Bibliography, New York, Garland Pub., 1986. ISBN 0-8240-8590-6.
Fictional works
Peter Medak's short television film, Nabokov on Kafka, is a dramatization of Nabokov's lectures on Franz Kafka's The Metamorphosis. The part of Nabokov is played by Christopher Plummer.
Nabokov makes three cameo appearances, at widely scattered points in his life, in W. G. Sebald's The Emigrants.
Entomology
Johnson, Kurt, and Steve Coates. Nabokov's blues: The scientific odyssey of a literary genius. New York: McGraw-Hill. ISBN 0-07-137330-6 (very accessibly written)
Sartori, Michel, ed. Les Papillons de Nabokov. [Thebutterflies of Nabokov.] Lausanne: Musée cantonal de Zoologie, 1993. ISBN 2-9700051-0-7 (exhibition catalogue, primarily in English)
Zimmer, Dieter. A guide to Nabokov's butterflies and moths. Privately published, 2001. ISBN 3-00-007609-3 (web page)Further Information
Get more info on 'Vladimir Nabokov'.
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