Vera: Mrs. Vladimir Nabokov

Vera is the utterly romantic (New York magazine) story of the 52-year marriage between Vladimir Nabokov, one the 20th century's most original writers, and a woman with an intellect and devotion to literature equal to her husband's. nNEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER n n Winner of the 2000 Pulitzer Prize for biography and hailed by critics as both monumental (The Boston Globe) and utterly romantic (New York magazine), Stacy Schiff's V ra (Mrs. Vladimir Nabokov) brings to shimmering life one of the greatest literary love stories of our time. Vladimir Nabokov--the migr author of Lolita; Pale Fire; and Speak, Memory--wrote his books first for himself, second for his wife, V ra, and third for no one at all. n Without my wife, he once noted, I wouldn't have written a single novel. Set in prewar Europe and postwar America, spanning much of the century, the story of the Nabokovs' fifty-two-year marriage reads as vividly as a novel. V ra, both beautiful and brilliant, is its outsized heroine--a woman who loves as deeply and intelligently as did the great romantic heroines of Austen and Tolstoy. Stacy Schiff's V ra is a triumph of the biographical form.n