Vladimir Nabokov
Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov was a Russian-American novelist, best known for his novel Lolita. His memoir Speak, Memory was described by Anne Applebaum as “one of the most beautiful memoirs ever written” and is our most recommended memoir.
Books by Vladimir Nabokov
“The Luzhin Defense is far and away the best novel written about chess players. It deals with chess and madness, which is an intriguing topic, because it’s often said that chess grandmasters have a propensity to insanity. Statistically, it’s probably not true, but, nonetheless, people think about Fischer, they think about Steinitz, the first undisputed world champion who went insane, and there were others as well, such as Morphy and Rubinstein. The great mystery to me, which this book touches on, is that it’s often said that these people are driven mad by chess, when actually it might have been the other way around – chess was the only thing that kept them from going off the deep end. It’s when they get away from chess, or try to break away from it, that their characters disintegrate. Fischer’s lunacy, if that’s what it was, broke out in full force when he abandoned playing the game. Within chess he was sublimely rational. They are often people who can be slightly awkward outside chess, but in chess are completely balanced.” Read more...
Dominic Lawson, Journalist
“I still think it’s one of the most beautiful memoirs ever written. Although it’s not about the Russian revolution as such, it is permeated with a sense of loss and exile, as are all of Nabokov’s books. He evokes gorgeous countryside scenes of pre-revolutionary Russia, but at the same time has some distance from it – he recognises the awfulness of what he at one point calls his “rather appalling country” at the same time.” Read more...
The best books on Memoirs of Communism
Anne Applebaum, Historian
Lolita
by Vladimir Nabokov
We highly recommend the audiobook of Lolita. Jeremy Irons gave a brilliant performance as Humbert Humbert in the 1997 film of Nabokov’s most controversial work. Here, he reprises the role by narrating the whole novel. Irons’ mellifluous voice amplifies the beauty of Nabokov’s writing, while his reading renders the all-at-once sinister, deluded, and preposterous qualities of the character. A must.
Narrator: Jeremy Irons
Length: 11 hours and 28 minutes
“The main character is a Russian professor at an American college, and the novel is to a large extent about Russian culture misunderstood by Westerners. But it is also a truncated love story with a moral dilemma. Pnin himself is not Jewish but Mira, once Pnin’s beloved, is Jewish, and she died in Buchenwald. The story is punctuated by the tension of his trying to forget and being incapable of unremembering. Nabokov was one of the very first American writers to write extensively about the Shoah in a work of fiction. Nabokov wrote Pnin in the 1950s and parts of it were published in the New Yorker, so it is astounding how far ahead of his literary contemporaries Nabokov was in his thinking about the Shoah and how it might be remembered and memorialised.” Read more...
Maxim D Shrayer, Literary Scholar
“I love Glory and am in a minority group among Nabokov fans in that……. Glory is a Russian novel written in Berlin, originally serialised in an émigré quarterly, and many years later translated into English by Dmitri Nabokov and his father – very well translated, I think.” Read more...
Maxim D Shrayer, Literary Scholar
“This is my favourite collection, and a lot of my own work on Nabokov deals with the stories. About 60 of them were written in Russian, ten in English. They cover four decades of Nabokov’s literary life and are representative of his dynamic as a writer both in Russian and in English, and as both a European and an American émigré. If you want to see his various predilections, the aesthetics and politics of Nabokov’s work, then the stories are a great place to go. Nabokov leaves a mark on the genre – some have argued that they are among the very best Russian, European, American short stories ever written. They are a great example of late, blazing modernism.” Read more...
Maxim D Shrayer, Literary Scholar
Interviews where books by Vladimir Nabokov were recommended
Best Vladimir Nabokov Books, recommended by Maxim D Shrayer
Bilingual author and translator with his pick of the five must-reads by – and about – Nabokov. Says a revisionist biography of the writer is due, which comes to terms with the Jewish influence on his work
The best books on Worry, recommended by Steven Amsterdam
The author tells us about books that have anxiety at their heart, ranging from obsessional love and chronic neurosis to conspiracy theory paranoia and existential angst
The best books on Love and Relationships, recommended by Ella Berthoud
Bibliotherapist Ella Berthoud prescribes some reading for love. Rekindle your relationship, remember first passions and beware obsessive love with help from these suggestions.
The best books on The Sun, recommended by Richard Cohen
It makes us feel sexy, it makes us feel healthy and it can even make us feel more inspired. No wonder we’re in thrall to the power of the sun, says Richard Cohen
The best books on Memoirs of Communism, recommended by Anne Applebaum
The traumas of the 20th century hit Eastern Europe hard – a region of changing borders, uncertain identity, and shattering of moral norms. The journalist and communism expert selects books that capture the spirit of the age.
Eva Hoffman recommends the best Memoirs
To tell your own story is to confront and construct your deepest sense of self. The author of Lost in Translation tells us about five striking memoirs of identity, dislocation, and belonging.
The Best Books About Chess, recommended by Dominic Lawson
You don’t have to be a genius to play chess, but it helps. British journalist and chess aficionado Dominic Lawson recommends the best books on chess, focusing on some of the great players of the 20th century and including the “best novel ever written about chess players.”
