Vladimir Nabokov is one of the most important novelists of the twentieth century--and a thoroughly international one whose work is as carefully read in France, Germany, Japan, and Finland as in his homelands of Russia and the United States. Nabokov was a serious man of letters, researching Russian literary history while writing American novels. In his fiction he claimed that his purpose was aesthetic rather than moral; yet, he had a didactic streak that came out in his lectures, his scholarship, and his interviews. He was known for the brilliance of his language and the intricate structure of his novels, and his work is filled with careful observations, flamboyant language, and an Olympian wit. The deliberately laid puzzles in his novels are still being debated, and he is much discussed in the literary world.

Born to a wealthy St. Petersburg family on 23 April 1899, Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov grew up...