Letters to Véra

Praise

“Extraordinary and wonderful…. Some of the most rapturous love letters anyone has ever written.” —The Spectator

“A self-portrait of the young Vladimir unvarnished by Nabokovian irony. The earliest letters, intoxicated with language and desire, are intoxicating to read.” —The New Yorker

“It is the prose itself that provides the lasting affirmation…the lavishness, the freely offered gift, of his divine energy.” —Martin Amis, The New York Times Book Review

“Letters to Véra, a five-decade epistolary love story, is like being handed a celebrity’s unlocked iPhone. Pry away…. I still hope for Nabokovian romance.” —Elle
 
“A fascinating collection of correspondence…. A wife—and indeed, a son—who could inspire such caring and creative letters as these deserve to be included in Nabokov’s literary legacy.” —The Christian Science Monitor
 
“Letters to Véra opens the workshop door and shows us Vladimir not in his accredited hard-shell case of genius but as a soft, vulnerable practicing writer…. Again and again, we see what Charles Kinbote, in Pale Fire, calls the magic of a mind ‘perceiving and transforming the world, taking it in and taking it apart, re-combining its elements.’” —Harper’s Magazine