Masters of European Prose

In the early 1980s, thanks to the efforts of Vladimir Nabokov's heirs and American textologist F. Bowers, readers were introduced to a new facet of the diverse talent of the famous author of "Lolita" and "Ada." Collected in three volumes, Nabokov's university lectures on Russian and European literature, delivered at Wellesley, Cornell, and Harvard in the 1940s-1950s, not only unveiled to Western audiences the vast and vibrant world of Gogol, Turgenev, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Chekhov, and presented Dickens, Flaubert, Proust, Kafka, and Joyce in a new light, but also astonishingly complemented the literary image of Nabokov himself. Reading Nabokov's lectures, which combine biographical essays with detailed analyses and original interpretations of famous works, became a necessary condition for penetrating the creative consciousness of the genius writer and the very essence of what is called the art of literature.

In this edition, for the first time, the complete translation of Nabokov's lectures on the masters of European prose is reproduced, along with accompanying and facsimile materials. In addition to notes by F. Bowers, the edition is provided with comments from the editor.