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    The Gift

    Part of Vintage International

    Author Vladimir Nabokov
    Ebook
    Knopf | Vintage
    On sale Feb 16, 2011 | 384 Pages | 9780307787774
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    Considered by many to be the greatest Russian novel of the twentieth century. •  An interweaving of the effects of life and memory, tradition and heritage, upon art, the book tells of Fyodor Godunov-Cherdyntsev, an impoverished poet seeking fame in the phantasmic world of Berlin in the 1920s.

    "A fascinating lesson in the truly staggering number of possible ways of writing and seeing." -Kirkus Reviews

    The Gift is the story of Fyodor Godunov-Cherdynstev, a writer living in the closed world of Russian intellectuals in Berlin shortly after the First World War. This gorgeous tapestry of literature follows the pursuits of an impoverished émigré poet living in Berlin, who dreams of the book he will someday write. 
     
    The Gift is the last of the novels Nabokov wrote in his native Russian and the crowning achievement of the initial period of his literary career. It is also his ode to Russian literature, evoking the works of Pushkin, Gogol, and others.
    Vladimir Nabokov studied French and Russian literature at Trinity College, Cambridge, then lived in Berlin and Paris, writing prolifically in Russian under the pseudonym Sirin. In 1940, he left France for America, where he wrote some of his greatest works—Bend Sinister (1947), Lolita (1955), Pnin (1957), and Pale Fire (1962)—and translated his earlier Russian novels into English. He taught at Wellesley, Harvard, and Cornell. He died in Montreux, Switzerland, in 1977. View titles by Vladimir Nabokov
    “[Nabokov is] the supreme master.”
    —The New York Times Book Review

    “Nabokov writes prose the only way it should be written, that is, ecstatically.”
    —John Updike

    “[Nabokov] is in a class by himself.”
    —The Atlantic

    About

    Considered by many to be the greatest Russian novel of the twentieth century. •  An interweaving of the effects of life and memory, tradition and heritage, upon art, the book tells of Fyodor Godunov-Cherdyntsev, an impoverished poet seeking fame in the phantasmic world of Berlin in the 1920s.

    "A fascinating lesson in the truly staggering number of possible ways of writing and seeing." -Kirkus Reviews

    The Gift is the story of Fyodor Godunov-Cherdynstev, a writer living in the closed world of Russian intellectuals in Berlin shortly after the First World War. This gorgeous tapestry of literature follows the pursuits of an impoverished émigré poet living in Berlin, who dreams of the book he will someday write. 
     
    The Gift is the last of the novels Nabokov wrote in his native Russian and the crowning achievement of the initial period of his literary career. It is also his ode to Russian literature, evoking the works of Pushkin, Gogol, and others.

    Author

    Vladimir Nabokov studied French and Russian literature at Trinity College, Cambridge, then lived in Berlin and Paris, writing prolifically in Russian under the pseudonym Sirin. In 1940, he left France for America, where he wrote some of his greatest works—Bend Sinister (1947), Lolita (1955), Pnin (1957), and Pale Fire (1962)—and translated his earlier Russian novels into English. He taught at Wellesley, Harvard, and Cornell. He died in Montreux, Switzerland, in 1977. View titles by Vladimir Nabokov

    Praise

    “[Nabokov is] the supreme master.”
    —The New York Times Book Review

    “Nabokov writes prose the only way it should be written, that is, ecstatically.”
    —John Updike

    “[Nabokov] is in a class by himself.”
    —The Atlantic

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