§Synopsis
01A 999 line poem in heroic couplets, divided into 4 cantos, was composed--according to Nabokov's fiction--by John Francis Shade, an obsessively methodical man, during the last 20 days of his life.
A 999 line poem in heroic couplets, divided into 4 cantos, was composed--according to Nabokov's fiction--by John Francis Shade, an obsessively methodical man, during the last 20 days of his life.
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Multilingual prose fiction, intricate wordplay, and complex narrative structures characterize a prominent body of twentieth-century literature that includes the famous novel Lolita. Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov, who also published under the pen name Vladimir Sirin, was a Russian and American novelist, poet, translator, and entomologist whose writing bridged Russian émigré culture and mid-century American fiction.
Born in Imperial Russia in 1899 to an aristocratic family in St. Petersburg, Nabokov grew up trilingual in Russian, English, and French. Following the Russian Revolution, he lived in Germany and France between 1922 and 1940. While living in Berlin, where he met his wife, Véra Nabokov, he wrote his first nine novels in Russian before emigrating to the United States in 1940. He became a U.S. citizen in 1945 and taught Russian and European literature at Cornell University from 1948 to 1958 while continuing scientific research in lepidopterology.
Nabokov's prose is defined by complex structural games, wordplay, unreliable narrators, and meticulous aesthetic detail. Recurring themes across his Russian and English works include exile, memory, artifice, obsession, and the fluidity of time.
