Véra Nabokov was the wife and assistant to the great Russian expatriate novelist Vladimir Nabokov. She was his closest confidante and adviser, and his grandest love. Almost all of these previously unpublished Letters to Véra are from the years 1923 to 1950, throughout their courtship and the first and most difficult half of their marriage. After that, during the years of Vladimir Nabokov's greatest literary fame, they were rarely separated and had no need to correspond.
The earliest letters in particular are wonderfully expressive, full of gorgeous imagery, dialogues and "imaginary nonsense." In 1926, Véra went to a sanatorium to be treated for anxiety, depression and weight loss, and Vladimir wrote to her almost every day. Those letters are flooded with his ardent love, and perhaps with his concern to entertain her and lift her mood. "I more than adore you. You are my happiness and life. When I think about you, I get so happy and light, and since I think about you always, I'm always happy and light."
Letters to Véra was edited by Nabokov scholar Brian Boyd and translated with sensitivity and skill by Olga Voronina. Boyd introduces the volume with a long satisfying biographical essay on the Nabokovs' marriage. In a translator's preface and in some of the endnotes, Voronina describes the challenges presented by Nabokov's word play across multiple languages, his puzzles and quirks of style. Thorough annotation, an excellent index, a biographical timeline and many photographs and reproductions of letter excerpts round out a book that will be a joy to both scholars and literary fans. --Sara Catterall