Letters to Véra - Tapa dura

"It is the prose itself that provides the lasting affirmation. The unresting responsiveness; the exquisite evocations of animals and of children; the way that everyone he comes across is minutely -individualized; the detailed visualizations of soirees and street scenes; the raw-nerved susceptibility to weather and underlying it all the lavishness, the freely offered gift, of his divine energy." --Martin Amis, The New York Times Book Review (front page)

"A self-portrait of the young Vladimir unvarnished by Nabokovian irony. The earliest letters, intoxicated with language and desire, are intoxicating to read . . . A lifetime of scholarship informs this massive tome." --Judith Thurman, The New Yorker

"Letters to Véra, a five-decade epistolary love story, is like being handed a celebrity's unlocked iPhone. Pry away . . . I still hope for Nabokovian romance." --Keziah Weir, Elle

"A fascinating collection of correspondence . . . A wife--and indeed, a son--who could inspire such caring and creative letters as these deserve to be included in Nabokov's literary legacy." --Peter Tonguette, The Christian Science Monitor

"Letters to Véra opens the workshop door and shows us Vladimir not in his accredited hard-shell case of genius but as a soft, vulnerable practicing writer . . . Again and again, we see what Charles Kinbote, in Pale Fire, calls the magic of a mind 'perceiving and transforming the world, taking it in and taking it apart, re-combining its elements.'" --David Lipsky, Harper's Magazine