Vladimir Nabokov

Russian-born American novelist, poet, translator, and literary critic

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About

Born in St. Petersburg to an aristocratic family, Nabokov fled Russia after the 1917 Revolution. He studied at Cambridge, then wrote his first novels in Russian under the pseudonym V. Sirin in Berlin and Paris. In 1940, he emigrated to the United States, where he taught literature at Cornell and worked as a lepidopterist at Harvard. His novel Lolita (1955) brought him worldwide fame. He settled in Switzerland in 1961 and died there in 1977.

* 1899-04-10 — † 1977-07-02

Major works

Lolita (1955)novel
Pnin (1957)novel
Pale Fire (1962)novel
Speak, Memory (1951)memoir
Ada, or Ardor: A Family Chronicle (1969)novel

Key milestones

1945Becomes a U.S. citizen.
1955Publication of Lolita, bringing him international fame.
1964Publishes a four-volume annotated translation of Pushkin's Eugene Onegin.

Themes

exile and nostalgiaidentity and memoryart and illusionobsessive lovefate and chance

Sources: loc.gov · britannica.com

“Life is a great surprise. I do not see why death should not be an even greater one.”

— Vladimir NabokovTheme · Philosophy

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“The cradle rocks above an abyss, and common sense tells us that our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness.”

— Vladimir NabokovTheme · Philosophy

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“Human life is but a series of footnotes to a vast obscure unfinished masterpiece.”

— Vladimir NabokovTheme · Philosophy

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