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 ...

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 ...

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, ...

New Takes on the classics. Throughout our centennial year, we’re revisiting notable works from the archive. Sign up to receive them directly in your inbox. The most interesting texts often include ...

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 ...

You don't know Vladimir. That's the central idea behind The Secret History of Vladimir Nabokov by journalist Andrea Pitzer. Gone is the apolitical, chilly aesthete of Lolita, Pale Fire and other ...

Simply sign up to the Life & Arts myFT Digest -- delivered directly to your inbox. When Lolita was first published in 1955, an American critic suggested that it constituted a record of the author’s ...

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 ...