ABSTRACT
After Lolita brought him international fame, Vladimir Nabokov kept producing new novels while translating earlier Russian works into English. Since his death, other translations, fiction, lectures, correspondence, writings on lepidoptera, and even a dream diary have appeared. The latest book, Think, Write, Speak: Uncollected Essays, Reviews, Interviews, and Letters to the Editor, offers a dazzling introduction to his work while tracing his progress from an essay on “Cambridge,” written as a Russian émigré student in 1921, to an interview with the BBC Books Programme in 1977. Scholars of American literature will be intrigued by evidence of his transformation from Russian author V. Sirin to American writer and university professor Vladimir Nabokov—including his first interview (in Russian) after arriving in New York City in 1940, his early book reviews (in English) for American journals, fascinating glimpses of his academic career at Wellesley and Cornell, and dozens of charmingly playful interviews from Lolita’s publication until his death. More than eight decades since Nabokov immigrated to the United States, there is still much to learn about his American literary career.
