The foundational text for the acclaimedinternational best seller Reading Lolita in Tehran

Empathetic, incisive. . . . Asweeping overview of Nabokov's major works. . . . Graceful [and] discerning.Kirkus Reviews

The ruler of a totalitarian state seeks validation from a former schoolmate, now the nations foremost thinker, in order to access a cultural cache alien to his regime. A literary critic provides commentary on an unfinished poem that both foretells the poets death and announces the critics secret identity as the king of a lost country. The greatest of Vladimir Nabokovs enchantersHumbertis lost within the antithesis of a fairy story, in which Lolita does not hold the key to his past but rather imprisons him within the knowledge of his distance from that past.

In this precursor to her international best seller Reading Lolita in Tehran, Azar Nafisi deftly explores the worlds apparently lost to Nabokovs characters, their portals of access to those worlds, and how other worlds hold a mirror to Nabokovs experiences of physical, linguistic, and recollective exile. Written before Nafisi left the Islamic Republic of Iran, and now published in English for the first time and with a new introduction by the author, this book evokes the readers quintessential journey of discovery and reveals what caused Nabokov to distinctively shape and reshape that journey for the author.