Russia and its World
Russia in all its aspects has always exerted a pull on me. Its history, art, music, food, landscapes, dress in all varied ethnic glory, and, above all, its literature have a special access to my attention. A major challenge is Russia’s colossal size and diversity of geography. Another continual surprise is the number of its distinctive peoples, each with unique folkways and histories. Russia has had some epic totalitarian regimes over its long history — but it also has been the home of some of the world’s greatest, most creative, and most influential anarchist philosophers. Russia is big enough and complex enough to handle all sorts of contradictions and paradoxes — and to claim them all proudly (and fatalistically, a classic Russian trait).
Over the years I have noticed that my store has become home to a great range of literature, fiction and nonfiction, of the Russian soul and mind and heart. I share it here and may update it as often as possible.
Think, Write, Speak: Uncollected Essays, Reviews, Interviews, and Letters to the Editor
Think, Write, Speak: Uncollected Essays, Reviews, Interviews, and Letters to the Editor
A rich compilation of the previously uncollected Russian and English prose and interviews of one of the twentieth century’s greatest writers, edited by Nabokov experts Brian Boyd and Anastasia Tolstoy
“I think like a genius, I write like a distinguished author, and I speak like a child”: so Nabokov famously, and infamously, wrote when introducing his 1973 volume of selected prose, Strong Opinions. Think, Write, Speak follows up where Strong Opinions left off, presenting Nabokov’s public writings from a 1921 essay about Cambridge to two last interviews in 1977. The chronological order allows us to watch the Cambridge student and the fledgling Berlin reviewer and poet turn into the acclaimed Paris émigré novelist whose stature would bring him to teach and write in America, where his international success exploded with Lolita and propelled him back to Europe as a recognized literary master. Straddling Russian, French and Anglophone worlds, Nabokov discovers contemporary literature and culture at his own pace and with his own strong dispositions. Whether his subject is Proust or Pushkin, the sport of boxing or the privileges of democracy, Nabokov’s supreme individuality and his alertness to the details of life past and present illuminate the page and remind us why he has been called the greatest of prose stylists.
Vladimir Nabokov studied French and Russian literature at Trinity College, Cambridge, then lived in Berlin and Paris, writing prolifically in Russian under the pseudonym Sirin. In 1940, he left France for America, where he wrote some of his greatest works—Bend Sinister (1947), Lolita (1955), Pnin (1957), and Pale Fire (1962)—and translated his earlier Russian novels into English. He taught at Wellesley, Harvard, and Cornell. He died in Montreux, Switzerland, in 1977.