The secret history of Vladimir Nabokov

Resource Information

The work The secret history of Vladimir Nabokov represents a distinct intellectual or artistic creation found in Waubonsee Community College. This resource is a combination of several types including: Work, Language Material, Books.

Label

The secret history of Vladimir Nabokov

Statement of responsibility

Andrea Pitzer

Creator

• Pitzer, Andrea

Subject

• Nabokov, Vladimir Vladimirovich, 1899-1977 -- Criticism and interpretation
• Authors, Russian
• 1900-1999
• Criticism, interpretation, etc
• Nabokov, Vladimir, 1899-1977
• Biography
• Nabokov, Vladimir D, 1869-1922
• Literary life
• Authors, American -- 20th century -- Biography
• Nabokov, Vladimir, (Vladimir Vladimirovič), 1899-1977
• Biografieèen (vorm)
• Nabokov, Familie
• Authors, Russian -- 20th century -- Biography
• Nabokov, Vladimir Vladimirovich, 1899-1977
• Authors, American

Genre

• Biografieèen (vorm)
• Biography
• Criticism, interpretation, etc

Language

eng

Summary

• Argues that the famous Russian-American novelist, accused of turning a blind eye to the horrors of history, hid this disturbing information within his fiction
• "Novelist Vladimir Nabokov witnessed the horrors of his century, escaping Revolutionary Russia then Germany under Hitler, and fleeing France with his Jewish wife and son just weeks before Paris fell to the Nazis. He repeatedly faced accusations of turning a blind eye to human suffering to write artful tales of depravity. But does one of the greatest writers in the English language really deserve the label of amoral aesthete bestowed on him by so many critics? Using information from newly-declassified intelligence files and recovered military history, journalist Andrea Pitzer argues that far from being a proponent of art for art's sake, Vladimir Nabokov managed to hide disturbing history in his fiction--history that has gone unnoticed for decades. Nabokov emerges as a kind of documentary conjurer, spending the most productive decades of his career recording a saga of forgotten concentration camps and searing bigotry, from World War I to the Gulag and the Holocaust. Lolita surrenders Humbert Humbert's secret identity, and reveals a Nabokov appalled by American anti-Semitism. The lunatic narrator of Pale Fire recalls Russian tragedies that once haunted the world. From Tsarist courts to Nazi film sets, from CIA front organizations to wartime Casablanca, the story of Nabokov's family is the story of his century--and both are woven inextricably into his fiction"--Publisher's description

Biography type

individual biography

Cataloging source

BTCTA

Dewey number

813/.54

Illustrations

• illustrations
• plates

Index

index present

LC call number

PG3476.N3

LC item number

Z825 2013

Literary form

non fiction

Nature of contents

bibliography