Cirrus@Austlit

'Vladimir Nabokov is known most widely for his scandalous and disconcerting satire of American mores, Lolita. For his admirers, though, he is a writer who takes readers unresistingly into his imaginative world and suggests to them that life is so full of meaning that they, too, might write if only they could find the hidden patterns. His novels Lolita, Pale Fire and Ada are masterpieces, but it is his memoir, Speak, Memory, that is most likely to inspire readers to recall those vivid moments in their own lives when the world appeared to contain vast possibilities.' (Introduction)