Vladimir Nabokov Books, Quotes, Biography, Novels

Vladimir Nabokov Books, Quotes, Biography, Novels
Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977) was one of the 20th century’s most brilliant and stylistically dazzling writers — a Russian-born novelist, poet, short-story writer, translator, and entomologist (butterfly expert) who achieved mastery in both Russian and English.

Nabokov grew up in privilege, losing everything after the 1917 Russian Revolution forced his family into exile. He studied at Cambridge University, lived in Berlin (where his father was assassinated in 1922), married Véra Slonim in 1925 (his lifelong editor, typist, and protector), and fled Nazi Europe in 1940, eventually settling in the United States.

In America he taught literature (notably at Cornell), hunted butterflies across the West, and wrote his most famous English-language novels. In 1961, the success of Lolita allowed the Nabokovs to retire to the Montreux Palace Hotel in Switzerland, where he spent his final years.

He was a serious lepidopterist — he discovered and named several butterfly species and proposed an influential (and later vindicated) theory about the evolution of blues (Polyommatus) butterflies.

Major Works
Russian period (as Sirin, 1920s–1930s): Mary (1926), King, Queen, Knave (1928), The Defense (1930), Glory (1932), Invitation to a Beheading (1936), The Gift (1937–38) — often considered his greatest Russian novel.
English period:The Real Life of Sebastian Knight (1941) — his first English novel.
Bend Sinister (1947).
Lolita (1955) — his most famous (and controversial) work.
Pnin (1957) — a tender academic comedy.
Pale Fire (1962) — a wildly innovative “novel” in the form of a poem + commentary.
Ada, or Ardor (1969) — a lush, time-bending family chronicle.
Transparent Things (1972), Look at the Harlequins! (1974).

Non-fiction/memoir: Speak, Memory (revised 1966) — one of the greatest autobiographies ever written.
Translations: Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin (controversial for its literalism), Alice in Wonderland into Russian, and more.

Nabokov’s style is unmistakable: precise, playful, sensuous, full of puns, allusions, and structural games. He famously declared that “good” fiction should provide “aesthetic bliss” — curiosity, tenderness, kindness, ecstasy.

The best places to find Vladimir Nabokov books online are:
eBay Books
Amazon.com Books