Speak, Memory: An Autobiography Revisited (Vintage International)

Vladimir Nabokov's memoir recounts his life from childhood through early adulthood. Originally published in 1951 as Conclusive Evidence, the work was substantially revised and reissued in 1966 as Speak, Memory. The autobiography describes Nabokov's upbringing in an eccentric, liberal aristocratic family living on Russian country estates immersed in politics and literature. It covers his adolescent years, his family's flight from Bolshevik terror when he was eighteen, his education in England, and his subsequent life as an émigré in Paris and Berlin. Nabokov's prose captures the texture of a world destroyed by the Russian Revolution, presenting a moving portrait of family life and the experiences that shaped him during this period of upheaval and displacement.