Vladimir Nabokov
Days of The Jackal: how Andrew Wylie turned serious literature into big business
The long read: Andrew Wylie is agent to an extraordinary number of the planet’s biggest authors. His knack for making highbrow writers very rich helped to define a literary era – but is his reign now coming to an end?
Alex Blasdel
09, Nov, 2023 @5:00 AM
Graham Greene was ‘ready to go to jail for Lolita’, says Véra Nabokov’s diary
Newly published record of the struggle to get the controversial 1955 novel past censors adds ‘there could be no better reason’
Kim Willsher in Paris
29, Sep, 2023 @8:21 AM
The Scent of Flowers at Night by Leïla Slimani review – a writer’s lot
The French-Moroccan author’s slightly precious meditation on literary creation is strongest when examining its limitations and reflecting on her own childhood
John Self
28, May, 2023 @8:00 AM
UK ambassador to Ukraine: ‘My hands were shaking. It was the adrenaline’
Melinda Simmons on life in Kyiv, Putin’s motives, and learning to tell the difference between a boom and an explosion
Luke Harding in Kyiv
04, Nov, 2022 @9:29 AM
Lolita at 60: Stanley Kubrick’s daring drama is a deft tightrope act
The first, and greatest, adaptation of Vladimir Nabokov’s troubling 1955 novel still possesses a strange and unnerving power
Jesse Hassenger
13, Jun, 2022 @5:19 AM
Mary Gaitskill: ‘I have a nuanced mind, for better and worse’
The novelist and essayist on the disturbing power of Lolita, her regard for John Cheever, and her aversion to simplistic arguments
Anthony Cummins
06, Nov, 2021 @6:00 PM
Skin by Sergio del Molino review – a meditation on psoriasis and the psyche
A sufferer writes about how the skin condition affected figures as diverse as Joseph Stalin, John Updike and Cyndi Lauper
Houman Barekat
29, Oct, 2021 @6:30 AM
Top 10 novels about long-distance relationships | Amber Medland
The pleasures and perils of sustaining human connection while physically separated have inspired writers from Sally Rooney to Vladimir Nabokov
Amber Medland
08, Sep, 2021 @12:00 PM
Damon Galgut: ‘After reading Roald Dahl, the world never looked the same’
The Booker-longlisted author on the dazzling wordplay of Nabokov, feeling bemused by Haruki Murakami and struggling to finish Dickens
Damon Galgut
06, Aug, 2021 @9:00 AM
Poem of the week: To Vladimir Nabokov … by Anthony Burgess
Part showy display of literary style, part grumpy personal letter, this is a rich celebration of the power of writing
Carol Rumens
19, Apr, 2021 @10:50 AM
Vladimir Nabokov's Superman poem published for the first time
In The Man of To-morrow’s Lament, rejected by the New Yorker in 1942, the Lolita author imagines the superhero mourning his inability to have children with Lois Lane
Alison Flood
04, Mar, 2021 @10:57 AM
Being Lolita by Alisson Wood review – memoir of an illicit relationship
An account of a teenage affair with a teacher feels like therapy and lacks deep thinking
Rachel Cooke
16, Feb, 2021 @7:00 AM
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