Vladimir Nabokov's debut novel, Mary, is a well written story about a youthful love. Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov 22 April [O.S. 10 April] 1899 - 2 July 1977), also known by the pen name Vladimir Sirin (Владимир Сирин), was a Russian-American novelist, poet, translator, and entomologist. Born in Imperial Russia in 1899, Nabokov wrote his first nine novels in Russian (1926-1938) while living in Berlin, where he met his wife. He achieved international acclaim and prominence after moving to the United States, where he began writing in English. Nabokov became an American citizen in 1945 and lived mostly on the East Coast before returning to Europe in 1961, where he settled in Montreux, Switzerland.
From 1948 to 1959, Nabokov was a professor of Russian literature at Cornell University.
Nabokov's 1955 novel Lolita ranked fourth on Modern Library's list of the 100 best 20th-century novels in 2007 and is considered one of the greatest 20th-century works of literature. Nabokov's Pale Fire, published in 1962, was ranked 53rd on the same list. His memoir, Speak, Memory, published in 1951, is considered among the greatest nonfiction works of the 20th century, placing eighth on Random House's ranking of 20th century works. Nabokov was a seven-time finalist for the National Book Award for Fiction. He also was an expert lepidopterist and composer of chess problems.
... Nabokov is known as one of the leading prose stylists of the 20th century; his first writings were in Russian, but he achieved his greatest fame with the novels he wrote in English. As a trilingual (also writing in French, see Mademoiselle O) master, he has been compared to Joseph Conrad, but Nabokov disliked both the comparison and Conrad's work. He lamented to the critic Edmund Wilson, "I am too old to change Conradically"-which John Updike later called "itself a jest of genius". This lament came in 1941, when Nabokov had been an apprentice American for less than one year. Later, in a November 1950 letter to Wilson, Nabokov offers a solid, non-comic appraisal: "Conrad knew how to handle readymade English better than I; but I know better the other kind. He never sinks to the depths of my solecisms, but neither does he scale my verbal peaks." Nabokov translated many of his own early works into English, sometimes in collaboration with his son, Dmitri. His trilingual upbringing had a profound influence on his art. ..