Moscow, Nov 20 (IANS/RIA Novosti) Around 300 previously unpublished love letters by Russian novelist Vladimir Nabokov to his wife Vera Slonim will be published next year in the US in the form of a book.
Written from 1923-1975, the collection by the writer of ‘Lolita’ will be published by Knopf publishers under the title ‘Letters to Vera’.
Some of the letters will be printed in Russia’s Snob magazine Saturday.
Dmitry Nabokov, son of the novelist, said: ‘I’ve been planning to release these notes for a long time, not only because they are written beautifully and are a pre-eminent epitome of Nabokov’s prose, but also because they allow us to take a closer look at the relationship between two remarkably fine and talented people.’
Vera Slonim’s part of the exchange will, however, not be published.
‘My mother, Vera Nabokov, was a very reserved person who aimed to keep her private life private and preferred not to let her letters be published,’ Dmitry Nabokov said.
The famous novelist dedicated almost all of his books to Vera. Although the two were rarely apart, Nabokov’s personal archive comprises some 300 notes of correspondence between them.
Vladimir Nabokov was born to an aristocratic Russian family in St. Petersburg, where he lived until his family fled the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917. After studying at Cambridge University and living in Berlin, he emigrated to the US in 1940.
He is also well known in the West as the author of ‘Lolita’, ‘Pale Fire’ and ‘Bend Sinister’.
–IANS/RIA Novosti
pm
