Nabokov in America - On the Road to Lolita

New York: Bloomsbury USA, 2015. A new unread copy with new dustjacket. First Edition, First Printing. 354 pages. Illustrations in the text. Map endpapers. The author of the immortal Lolita nd Pale Fire, born to a distinguished Russian family, represents for many the apotheosis of the high modernist artist: cultured, refined - as European as they come. But Vladimir Nabokov, who came to America to escape the Nazis, grew to think of his time there as the richest of his life. Here and his Jewish wife could live and breathe, here they raised a beloved son in safety and normalcy. Robert Roper fills out this period of Nabokov's life with charm and insight - covering Nabokov's friendship with Edmund Wilson, his time at Wellesley and Cornell, his long work at Harvard's Museum of Comparative Zoology. But the book finds its narrative heart in the writer's many summer sojourns in the wilds of the American West. The Nabokovs covered more than two hundred thousand miles by car as Vladimir indulged his most overwhelming passion - not for literature but for butterfly hunting. The book is also a love letter to American literature, tracing Nabokov's broad and ingenious embrace of it. Steeped in Russian, British, French and classical literature, he read prolifically among American writers or years. L. First. Hard Cover. New/New. 8vo - over 7¾" - 9¾" tall.