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‘His Joy, His Life’

Stacy Schiff, November 19, 2015 Issue

Letters to Véra

by Vladimir Nabokov, edited and translated from the Russian by Olga Voronina and Brian Boyd, Knopf, 794 pp., $40.00

When he mailed the first missive to the woman who would become his wife, Vladimir Nabokov was a penurious, Berlin-based poet known to the émigré community as “V ( Read more... )

THREE GRADES OF EVIL can be discerned in the queer world of verbal transmigration. The first, and lesser one, comprises obvious errors due to ignorance or misguided knowledge. This is mere human frailty and thus excusable. The next step to Hell is taken by the translator who intentionally skips words or passages that he does not bother to ( Read more... )