"This is the first comprehensive account of Nabokov's life and oeuvre. The book's wide-ranging research and deep affinity for Nabokov's writings should establish it as the single indispensable source on its subject for many decades to come."--Simon Karlinsky, University of California, Berkeley This first major critical biography of Vladimir Nabokov, one of the greatest of twentieth-century writers, finally allows us full access to the dramatic details of his life and the depths of his art. An intensely private man, Nabokov was uprooted first by the Russian Revolution and then by World War II. Transformed into a permanent wanderer, he did not achieve fame until late in life, with the success of Lolita. In this first of two volumes, Brian Boyd vividly describes the liberal milieu of the aristocratic Nabokovs, their escape from Russia, Nabokov's education at Cambridge, and the murder of his father in Berlin. Boyd then turns to the years that Nabokov spent, impoverished, in Germany and France, until the coming of Hitler forced him to flee, with wife and son, to the United States. This volume stands on its own as a fascinating exploration of Nabokov's Russian years and Russian worlds, prerevolutionary and migr. In the course of his ten years' work on the biography, Boyd traveled along Nabokov's trail everywhere from Yalta to Palo Alto. The only scholar to have had free access to the Nabokov archives in Montreux and the Library of Congress, he also interviewed at length Nabokov's family and scores of his friends and associates. For the general reader, Boyd offers an introduction to Nabokov the man, his works, and his world. For the specialist, he provides a basis for all future research on Nabokov's life and art, as he dates and describes the composition of all Nabokov's works, published and unpublished. Boyd investigates Nabokov's relation to and his independence from his time, examines the special structures of his mind and thought, and explains the relations between his philosophy and his innovations of literary strategy and style. At the same time he provides succinct introductions to all the fiction, dramas, memoirs, and major verse; presents detailed analyses of the major books that break new ground for the scholar, while providing easy paths into the works for other readers; and shows the relationship between Nabokov's life and the themes and subjects of his art.

布赖恩•博伊德（Brian Boyd）新西兰奥克兰大学英语系杰出教授，国际知名学者，纳博科夫研究权威，成果荣获多种奖励，并被译成12种文字。他最富盛名的学术成果包括两卷本传记《纳博科夫传：俄罗斯时期》、《纳博科夫传：美国时期》，关于《微暗的火》、《阿达》的研究著作以及他负责的网站“阿达在线”。此外，他还编有《美国图书馆中的纳博科夫》（三卷本，1996），合编《纳博科夫的蝴蝶》（与罗伯特•迈克尔•派尔合作）、《诗歌与译文》（与斯坦尼斯拉夫•什瓦布林合作，哈考特，2008），并帮助意大利阿德尔斐七星诗社出版社和西班牙银河出版社编辑纳博科夫全集。他的近期著作包括《论故事的起源：进化、认识与小说》（贝尔克纳普/哈佛，2009）以及《文学的进化论研究：艺术与科学读本》（哥伦比亚，2009）。目前正研究撰写科学哲学家卡尔•波普尔的传记。

刘佳林，1965年11月生，上海交通大学人文学院中文系副教授，硕士生导师。近期主要成果有：《比较文学概论》（参编），《论文明、权力与知识》（译著），《诚与真》（译著），《汉娜•阿伦特：政治、历史与公民身份》（译著），《外国传记鉴赏辞典》（副主编）等。目前正承担国家社科基金项目“纳博科夫小说论”的研究工作。