Letters to Vera (Pisma k Vere)

Vladimir and Véra Nabokov were married for over fifty years—a remarkable example of a happy marriage in the literary world. They were rarely apart for long, yet their archive contains over three hundred letters and notes from Nabokov, from 1923 to 1975. One of the finest writers of the 20th century, the brilliant, ironic, and exacting Nabokov emerges in this book as a tender and caring husband. '...You and I are quite special; no one knows such miracles as we know, and no one loves as we do,' he wrote in 1924. Vera Evseyevna was his first reader, his typist and secretary, and after the writer's death, she translated his English works and guarded his extensive legacy.

The letters collected in this edition paint a detailed portrait of the young Nabokov: his immediate circle and acquaintances, literary plans and reading circle, his leisure time, everyday habits, memories of Russia and Cambridge, plans for the future, etc. In the letters of his later years, his love and admiration for his wife, who shared with him both difficult trials and worldwide fame, remain unchanged.