Summary

In 1919 Nabokov’s family, now reunited with his father, flee Crimea for Western Europe. His family settles briefly in London and Nabokov and his younger brother, Sergey, attend Cambridge University. Shortly after they begin school his parents and three younger siblings move to Berlin. At Cambridge Nabokov is sick with a nostalgia for Russia, and even though as a boy he favored English over the Russian language, it is in England that he works at defining himself as a Russian writer.

He notes that it is during this time period when he and younger brother Sergey enjoy a close relationship. Though Sergey is only ten months younger, he and Nabokov interacted very little in their childhoods. (Nabokov quotes that he was the coddled one and Sergey the observer of the coddling.) Though Nabokov is homesick for Russia and is doing his best to identify...