ABSTRACT
Nabokov was a writer (primarily a novelist)
who wrote in two languages (Russian and
English), had two literary careers (as an
e´migre´ under the pen-name of Sirin and as a
major American author), and whose art is
preoccupied with worlds within and
beyond other worlds. Born in St Petersburg,
the son of a well-known liberal politician, he
left Russia with his family after the
Revolution of 1917. After taking a degree in
French and Russian at Cambridge, he settled
in Berlin, where he became a prominent
and distinguished member of the Russian
e´migre´ literary world (the name Sirin is an
obscure homage to the Russian publishing
house which brought out Andrey Bely’s
modernistic novel Petersburg, much admired
by Nabokov). His first novel, Mashenka, was
published in Russian in 1926 and translated
into German two years later (translated into
English as Mary, 1970). Its theme of exile,
loss and erotic yearning, as well as its
comic and parodistic elements, and its self-
conscious illusionism, foreshadow later and
greater works, especially those which hold
up distorting mirrors to a distorted reality,
like Despair (1936/66), Invitation to a
Beheading (1935/60), and Bend Sinister (1947).
The erotic strain in Mashenka foreshadows
Lolita (1955), while the element of fictitious
biography is developed in Glory (1932/71)
and The Defence (1930/64) as well as two
