Product Description

'Speak, memory', said Vladimir Nabokov. And immediately there came flooding back to him a host of enchanting recollections – of his comfortable childhood and adolescence, of his rich, liberal-minded father, his beautiful mother, an army of relations and family hangers-on and of grand old houses in St Petersburg and the surrounding countryside in pre-Revolutionary Russia. Young love, butterflies, tutors and a multitude of other themes thread together to weave an autobiography, which is itself a work of art.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #22723 in Books
• Published on: 2009-11-05
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 288 pages

About the Author
Vladimir Nabokov was born in 1899 in St Petersburg. He wrote his first literary works in Russian, but rose to international prominence as a masterly prose stylist for the novels he composed in English, most famously, Lolita. Between 1923 and 1940 he published novels, short stories, plays, poems and translations in the Russian language and established himself as one of the most outstanding Russian émigré writers. He died in 1977.

Customer Reviews

A sight into the life Nabokov put on his fictions
In this book Navokov let us see how his works were pregnant of his past. It's a collection of several articles, a kind of puzzle, in wich we see through the coloured glass of his fine prose some scenes of his life recreated in his main caracters (Sebastian Knight, for example). He take us from Chapter one (wich begins with the words "The craddle..." and ends with "...the coffin") through his enchanted russian childhood and his first love affair with Tamara to the day he leaves France with his wife and child to begin his american years.More than a common biography you will find a novel that he doubles in 1974's "Look at the harlequins!" in a fine exercise of counterpoint.

Sublime - Enchanting
'Speak Memory' is the essential companion for anyone reading Nabokov's fictional works. The writing simply flows across the brain and is easier to read than Proust. I see 'SM' as an extension of what Proust was trying to achieve by transcribing memory into art; however if you can only read English, then reading Proust can be a little disatisfying (sic?) as he's always presented through a translator - no such worries with Nabokov who loved the Englsih language so much to become the greatest stylist since Joyce.

Reading 'SM' can give yourself a personal perspective on your own past and memory and makes one realise that we all have a vault of inspiration within our own minds in which to write about.