Vladimir Nabokov

Vladimir Nabokov was born in Saint Petersburg in 1899, into an aristocratic family. When the Bolsheviks seized power in Russia, his family left the country. He studied French and Russian literature at Trinity College, Cambridge, and in 1922 settled in Berlin, where his father published the Russian-language newspaper "Rul'." The rise of Nazism in Germany led Vladimir, his wife Vera, and their son Dmitri to Paris in 1938, and Hitler's victory prompted their permanent move to America in 1940. There, he lived and taught literature at Wellesley College, Stanford, Cornell, and Harvard. From 1959, he dedicated himself exclusively to writing. As one of the most significant authors of the twentieth century, he wrote in both Russian and English. In 1973, he was awarded the American Medal for Literature. Among his works written in Russian (which he later translated into English himself) are: "Laughter in the Dark," "Mashenka/Mary," "The Defense," "Despair," "Invitation to a Beheading," "The Eye," "The Gift," and "The Enchanter" (a precursor to "Lolita"). Among those he wrote in English are "The Real Life of Sebastian Knight," "Pale Fire," "Ada," "Bend Sinister," "Pnin," "Transparent Things," "Speak, Memory," "The Original of Laura" (an unfinished novel he instructed to be destroyed), and of course his masterpiece, "Lolita," which has been adapted for film several times. He passed away in 1977 in Switzerland, following a decline in health after a fall on the slopes of Davos, where he pursued his hobby of butterfly collecting.