From one of the 20th century's great writers comes one of the
finest autobiographies of our time. Speak, Memory was first
published by Vladimir Nabokov in 1951 as Conclusive Evidence and
then assiduously revised and republished in 1966. The Everyman's
Library edition includes, for the first time, the previously
unpublished "Chapter 16"--the most significant unpublished piece of
writing by the master, newly released by the Nabokov estate--which
provided an extraordinary insight into Speak, Memory.
Nabokov's memoir is a moving account of a loving, civilized
family, of adolescent awakenings, flight from Bolshevik terror,
education in England, and émigré life in Paris and Berlin. The
Nabokovs were eccentric, liberal aristocrats, who lived a life
immersed in politics and literature on splendid country estates
until their world was swept away by the Russian revolution when the
author was eighteen years old. Speak, Memory vividly evokes a
vanished past in the inimitable prose of Nabokov at his best.