Imagining Nabokov : Russia between art and politics / Nina L. Khrushcheva.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Khrushcheva, Nina L., 1964-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Nabokov, Vladimir Vladimirovich, 1899-1977--Criticism and interpretation.

Nabokov, Vladimir Vladimirovich.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xvii, 233 pages)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

New Haven : Yale University Press, c2007.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

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. In Imagining Nabokov: Russia Between Art and Politics, Nina L. Khrushcheva offers the novel 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. Khrushcheva, 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, she discusses the cultural and social realities of contemporary Russia that he foresaw a half-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, Khrushcheva contends, and Nabokov's work reveals how skills may be acquired to cope with the advent of democracy, capitalism, and open borders.

Contents:

Nabokov and us

Nabokov's Russian return, and retreat

Imagining Nabokov

On the way to the author

Poet, genius, and hero

Nabokov as the Pushkin of the twenty-first century.

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Includes bibliographical references (p. 227-233).

ISBN:

9786612088452

9781282088450

1282088459

9780300148244

0300148240

OCLC:

1024045098