Vladimir Nabokov's “Western choice”—his exile to the West after the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution—allowed him to take a crucial literary journey, leaving the closed nineteenth-century Russian culture behind and arriving in the extreme openness of twentieth-century America. This book offers the hypothesis that because of this journey, the works of Russian-turned-American Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977) are highly relevant to the political transformation under way in Russia today. The author of this book—a Russian living in America—finds in Nabokov's novels a useful guide for Russia's integration into ... More

Vladimir Nabokov's “Western choice”—his exile to the West after the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution—allowed him to take a crucial literary journey, leaving the closed nineteenth-century Russian culture behind and arriving in the extreme openness of twentieth-century America. This book offers the hypothesis that because of this journey, the works of Russian-turned-American Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977) are highly relevant to the political transformation under way in Russia today. The author of this book—a Russian living in America—finds in Nabokov's novels a useful guide for Russia's integration into the globalized world. Now one of Nabokov's “Western” characters herself, the author discusses the cultural and social realities of contemporary Russia that were foreseen half a century earlier. In Pale Fire; Ada, or Ardor; Pnin; and other works, Nabokov reinterpreted the traditions of Russian fiction, shifting emphasis from personal misery and communal life to the notion of forging one's own “happy” destiny. In the twenty-first century Russia faces a similar challenge, and Nabokov's work reveals how skills may be acquired to cope with the advent of democracy, capitalism, and open borders.